Application of Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy for Determination of Drugs in Human Body Fluids

Abstract

Although surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been under close attention of scientists for more than half a century, it is a relatively new method proposed for therapeutic drug monitoring and determination of drugs with narrow therapeutic window of concentrations in human body fluids. An important advantage of SERS signal is its multiband structure that enables a more detailed comparison of spectral profiles of the target analyte and interfering compounds during SERS analysis. This feature facilitates identification of the false positive results caused by the presence of body fluid components or non-target drugs.
However, intrinsically poor selectivity of direct SERS limits its applicability for accurate determination of drugs in body fluids. To overcome this drawback, the combination of SERS with separation and concentration techniques was proposed. Additionally, significant progress has also been achieved in the development of multifunctional SERS-active materials enabling improvement of the analysis selectivity. Moreover, despite complexity and uniqueness of the SERS signals, structurally related analytes (e.g. antibiotics of the same class) can have significant similarity in spectral profiles that enables technical simplification of the SERS assays, developing more universal analysis protocols and increase effectiveness of the method in express biomedical analysis.
Therefore, this report presents results in the use of SERS for accurate determination of drugs in human body fluids (urine, blood plasma and serum, saliva).

Speaker

Alexey V. Markin
Saratov State University
Russia

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