A turn-on fluorescence sensor for detection of heparinase with heparin templated aggregation of tetracationic porphyrin derivative

Heparinase is the only mammalian endoglycosidase that breaks down the commonly used blood-anticoagulant heparin into therapeutically relevant low-molecular-weight-heparin. Importantly, heparinase has been considered a malignant disease diagnostic marker. Thus, it is essential to develop detection scheme for heparinase. However, optical methods for heparinase determination are limited. In the present work, we report a turn-on fluorescence sensor for detection of heparinase that utilizes heparin-templated aggregation of a tetra-cationic porphyrin derivative, TMPyP4+, as a sensing framework. Heparinase cleaves the glycosidic linkage between hexosamine and uronic acid in the structure of heparin to destroy its polyelectrolytic nature that originally causes the aggregation of TMPyP4+. Thus, heparinase leads to dissociation of TMPyP4+ aggregates and generates an optical signal. This system leads to a sensitive and selective response towards heparinase with a Limit of Detection (LOD) of 0.3 pmol/L. Further, the same system is demonstrated to sense a trace amount of Oversulfated Chondrootin Sulphate (OSCS) in heparin, which is a heparin adulterant, by utilizing the fact that OSCS serves as an inhibitor for heparinase activity, which leads to reverse modulation in the photo-physical features of the monomer/aggregate equilibrium of the TMPyP4+-heparin-heparinase system. The sensing mechanism has been thoroughly demonstrated by ground-state absorption, steady-state emission, and time-resolved emission measurements. The selectivity of the sensor was tested using lysozyme, α-amylase, pepsin, trypsin, lipase, and glucose oxidase in the heparinase selectivity study and the method is also validated using another method reported in the literature. The study provides a new approach for the development of optical methods for the detection of heparinase and oversulfated chondroitin sulfate, which is currently limited.