Metallic Element Chelated Tag Labeling (MeCTL) for Quantitation of N-Glycans in MALDI-MS

N-glycosylation plays an important role in chief biological and pathological processes. Quantifying the N-glycan is important since glycan alterations are related to many diseases. In this study, we developed a novel N-glycan quantitation approach using metallic element chelated tag labeling (MeCTL) through reductive amination. The MeCTL strategy is of high labeling efficiency and accurate in quantitation with high reproducibility (CV < 17.03%) and good linearity (R² > 0.99) within 2 orders of magnitude of dynamic range. Additionally, it provides significant cross-ring fragmentation to distinguish N-glycan isomers. Furthermore, multiplex quantitation by chelation with several different rare earth elements can be achieved. At last, this strategy has been successfully used for evaluation of N-glycan changes in human serum associated with CRC, indicating its potential in clinical applications including disease N-glycome profiling and relative quantitation.