In-situ growth of covalent organic framework on stainless steel needles as solid-phase microextraction probe coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry for rapid and sensitive determination of tricyclic antidepressants in biosamples

Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) including amitriptyline (AT), doxepin (DOX) and nortriptyline (NT) are the first-line drugs for the clinical treatment of depression; however, monitoring TCA concentrations in biological fluids and tissues is necessary to improve therapeutic effect and determine the cause of death in patients. It is of great significance to develop a rapid and sensitive method for real-time monitoring of TCAs in various biosamples. In this work, we fabricated a novel covalent organic framework (COF) based solid-phase microextraction (SPME) probe by an in-situ step-by-step strategy, which was obtained by sequentially modifying 1,3,5-tri (4-aminophenyl) benzene (TPB) and 2, 5-divinylbenzaldehyde (DVA) on the surface of polydopamine layer. The TPB-DVA-COF-SPME probe possessed high specific surface area (1244 m2·g - 1), regular pores (3.23 nm), good hydrophobicity and stability, resulting in efficient enrichment for TCAs. Furthermore, the combination of TPB-DVA-COF-SPME probe and ambient electrospray ionization mass spectrometry system (ESI/MS) was firstly proposed for rapid and sensitive determination of TCAs in biosamples. As a result, the developed method exhibited low limits of detection (LODs) (0.1-0.5 μg∙L - 1), high enrichment factors (39-218), and low relative standard deviations (RSDs) for one probe (1.2-3.8%) and probe-to-probe (2.0-3.7%). Benefiting from these outstanding performance, TPB-DVA-COF-SPME probe was further successfully applied to biosamples (i.e., serum, liver, kidney, and brain) with excellent reusability, indicating the promising applicability of the TPB-DVA-COF-SPME-ESI/MS as a powerful tool for drug monitoring.