In Situ Characterization and Deep Profiling of Engineered Multispecific Nanoparticle Metabolite Coronas for Precise Serum Diagnostics

Upon exposure to biofluids, engineered nanoparticles (NPs) spontaneously form reproducible biomolecular coronas via selective diverse biomolecule adsorption. The corona characterization of metabolites poses greater analytical challenges than proteins due to their inherent molecular complexity, hindering research on this integral biomolecular corona component. Here we report a high-throughput platform integrating a series of magnetic multifunctional NPs (MFNs) with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI MS) technology for engineered formation and in situ characterization of the metabolite corona. Operating through a 2-3 min streamlined workflow (excluding incubation time), this integrated platform delivers direct interference-resistant metabolite corona fingerprints (MCFs) acquisition on pristine NP surfaces under protein-coexisting conditions without additional isolation procedures. We revealed five distinct composition patterns of metabolite coronas associated with surface functionalization strategies and characterized their temporal evolution trajectories. A panel of MFNs was further engineered for this platform, achieving high-coverage MCFs acquisition in an unbiased manner across 192 clinical serum samples. Integration of Xgboost-SHapley Additive exPlanations (XGB-SHAP) algorithms for MCFs decoding achieved early detection, biomarker panel screening, and risk factor interpretability of endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer (EAOC) with area under the curves (AUCs) of 0.96-0.99, developing a noninvasive diagnostic tool for early malignant transformation of endometriosis. Our work not only provides a reproducible framework for scalable metabolite corona research but also extends its precision medicine applications.