An electrochemical sensor based on graphene nanoribbon nano-catalyst for determination of etoposide as an approved drug in lung cancer

Abstract

Monitoring of anticancer drugs is an important strategy in clinical investigation. Determining the level of these drugs in chemotherapy processes provides useful information about the treatment process. The etoposide is one of the important drugs approved to lung cancer with many side effects. Therefore, monitoring of it is so important in clinical process and specially chemotherapy processes. The presence study focused on design of a new, simple, electrical-based, safe and fast response sensor to trace level monitoring of etoposide in biological fluids and pharmaceutical samples. The sensor successfully determined etoposide in nano-level concentration that is very important to investigation role of this anticancer drug in biological fluids. To this goal, the graphene nanoribbon nano-catalyst (GNR) was synthesized and characterized by MAP and SEM methods. The electrochemical catalytic activity of it was investigated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy method. In continuous, glassy carbon electrode (GCE) modified with GNR was fabricated and ability of sensor to sensing of etoposide was investigated by differential pulse voltammetric (DPV) method. The GNR/GCE monitored etoposide in the concentration range 0.4–150 µM with detection limit 0.1 µM by DPV methods. At biological condition (pH = 7.4), the GNR/GCE was successfully used to monitoring of etoposide in urine, serum and injection samples and data confirmed with HPLC method and Statistical tests.