A sandwich boronate affinity sorbent assay for glucose detection facilitated by boronic acid-terminated fluorescent polymers

[Display omitted] •A sandwich boronate affinity sorbent assay for glucose was established.•The method is selective and ultrasensitive for glucose detection.•A boronic acid terminated fluorescent polymer was used for signal amplification.•The developed method was applied to glucose detection of in human serum. Glucose monitoring is very important in clinical diagnosis, control and therapy of diabetes. Fluorescent methods based on boronate affinity recognition have attracted much attention in recent years. However, severe interferences from endogenous fluorophores or quenchers in samples are big concerns. In this work, a boronic acid terminated fluorescent polymer with multiple repeated fluorogens was synthesized by copolymerization of a fluorescent monomer [9-anthracenemethyl acrylate (9-AnMA)] and methyl methacrylate (MMA) via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), and a sandwich boronate affinity sorbent assay (SBASA) for selective and ultrasensitive detection of glucose was developed for the first time based on the distinguished feature of glucose which can form a bidentate glucose–boronic complex, using the fluorescent polymer for signal amplification. The proposed method could avoid the effects from typical interfering substances. Compared with previously reported methods, the SBASA has higher selectivity, wider linear range (0.003 to 3.0mM) and higher sensitivity (a detection limit of 0.8μM). Moreover, the developed method was successfully applied to the detection of glucose in human serum samples. The simple, rapid, convenient, and reliable SBASA provided a new concept and an attractive idea for glucose monitoring.