Gold-Platinum Nanoparticles with Core-Shell Configuration as Efficient Oxidase-like Nanosensors for Glutathione Detection

Abstract

Nanozymes, defined as nanomaterials that can mimic the catalytic activity of natural enzymes, have been widely used to develop analytical tools for biosensing. In this regard, the monitoring of glutathione (GSH), a key antioxidant biomolecule intervening in the regulation of the oxidative stress level of cells or related with Parkinson’s or mitochondrial diseases can be of great interest from the biomedical point of view. In this work, we have synthetized a gold-platinum Au@Pt nanoparticle with core-shell configuration exhibiting a remarkable oxidase-like mimicking activity towards the substrates 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) and o-phenylenediamine (OPD). The presence of a thiol group (-SH) in the chemical structure of GSH can bind to the Au@Pt nanozyme surface to hamper the activation of O2 and reducing its oxidase-like activity as a function of the concentration of GSH. Herein, we exploit the loss of activity to develop an analytical methodology able to detect and quantify GSH up to µM levels. The system composed by Au@Pt and TMB demonstrates a good linear range between 0.1–1.0 µM to detect GSH levels with a limit of detection (LoD) of 34 nM.