Carboxyl-fentanyl detection using optical fibre grating-based sensors functionalised with molecularly imprinted nanoparticles.

LiangLiang Liu, Fabiana Grillo, Francesco Canfarotta, Michael Whitcombe, Stephen P Morgan, Sergey Piletsky, Ricardo Correia, ChenYang He, Andrew Norris, Serhiy Korposh

Biosensors & bioelectronics 2021 Apr 01

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Butyrylfentanyl is a new designer drug reported with growing use and related deaths. Routine toxicological analyses of this novel synthetic opioid drug have not been established yet. This work reports a fibre optic sensor that measures carboxyl-fentanyl which is the major metabolite of butyrylfentanyl presented in blood, providing a promising tool for detecting butyrylfentanyl intoxication. A long period fibre grating (LPG) sensor array operating at phase-matching condition is deployed in combination with a state-of-the-art molecular imprinting technique. Nano-sized molecularly imprinted polymers (nanoMIPs) are synthesised via a solid-phase approach and coated on the surface of an LPG array. An LPG array consists of two parts: a detection and a reference LPG. The former is functionalised with nanoMIPs prior to the measurements, whilst the latter is used to take into account the temperature response of the detection LPG. The developed sensor exhibits a gradual response over increasing concentrations of carboxyl-fentanyl from 0 to 1000 ng/mL with a minimal detected concentration of 50 ng/mL, that corresponds to a wavelength shift of 1.20 ± 0.2 nm. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm is applied to fit the analytical data which reveal a binding constant of 2.03 μM-1. The developed sensor shows high selectivity in detecting carboxyl-fentanyl among other drugs and potential interferents including morphine, cocaine, glucose and albumin. It shows a certain degree of cross-response to fentanyl which shares the same binding sites as carboxyl-fentanyl and therefore can be potentially used to detect fentanyl. Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Citation

LiangLiang Liu, Fabiana Grillo, Francesco Canfarotta, Michael Whitcombe, Stephen P Morgan, Sergey Piletsky, Ricardo Correia, ChenYang He, Andrew Norris, Serhiy Korposh. Carboxyl-fentanyl detection using optical fibre grating-based sensors functionalised with molecularly imprinted nanoparticles. Biosensors & bioelectronics. 2021 Apr 01;177:113002