Poly (N-acryloxysuccinimide-co-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) precursor monolith and its post polymerization modification with alkyl ligands, trypsin and lectins for reversed-phase chromatography, miniaturized enzyme reactors and lectin affinity chromatography, respectively.

This investigation was aimed at introducing a monolithic precursor that can be conveniently grafted with the desired chromatographic ligand via the process of post polymerization modification (PPM). The precursor was obtained by the in-situ polymerization of N-acryloxysuccinimide (NAS) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA) in a narrow bore stainless steel column of 1 mm i.d. yielding a poly(NAS-co-EDMA) monolithic column designated as the poly(NAS-co-EDMA) monolith (NASM) column. In a first PPM, the NASM column was bonded with octadecyl (OD) ligands yielding a nonpolar NASM-OD column that proved useful for reversed phase chromatography (RPC) of proteins in gradient elution at increasing %ACN in the mobile phase. NASM-OD resulted from the reaction between the N-hydroxysuccinimide of NASM with octadecyl amine. In a second PPM, NASM was surface immobilized with trypsin generating a proteolytic narrow bore enzyme reactor called NASM-trypsin immobilized enzyme reactor (IMER) that permitted the online digestion of proteins in a 20-min single pass through the IMER incorporated in a setup equipped with a short RPC column to achieve simultaneously a peptide tryptic map. This constituted a rapid turnover whereby ∼95% of the protein was hydrolyzed by the immobilized trypsin. In a third PPM, the NASM column was surface immobilized with three different lectins (LCA, Con A and RCA) having complementary affinities toward serum glycoproteins thus permitting the capture of a wide range of glycoproteins/glycoforms. The three NASM-lectin columns when operated in a tandem format led to assessing the level of the various glycoforms in human serum via LC-MS/MS analysis of the captured protein fractions by each NASM-lectin column.