Fabrication of glucose-immobilizing fluorescent polymer particles with high magnetic responsiveness

Glycan-immobilizing particles are useful for a wide variety of biomedical applications, such as the detection, separation, and purification of proteins, viruses, and bacteria, which can be specifically bound by the glycan moieties. One strategy for the quick and accurate detection of these components is to collect the particles magnetically after binding the components to the particle surface. We fabricated core-shell particles composed of a magnetic core and a thin polymer shell. The shell was incorporated with a fluorescent dye with glucose molecules immobilized on its surface. As the magnetic core, we selected Fe3O4 particles. Taking into consideration its low environmental impact, we adopted soap-free emulsion polymerization to form the polymer shell. Thus, methyl methacrylate was polymerized in the presence of Fe3O4 particles, octyl-beta-d-glucopyranoside, and rhodamine B to generate a glucose-capped fluorescent PMMA thin shell on the Fe3O4 particles. The resulting particles exhibited a saturation magnetization of similar to 53 emu/g. The novelty of this research is that glucose-immobilized polymer particles with excellent magnetic properties that can be collected in 5 s using a magnet can be synthesized with an environmentally friendly method.