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Determination of methotrexate in spiked human urine using SERS-active sorbent

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Abstract

This report is dedicated to determination of anticancer drug methotrexate (MTX) in human urine using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Aluminum oxide loaded with silver nanoparticles (AO-Ag) was proposed as SERS-active sorbent and used for solid-phase extraction (SPE) of the analyte and its SERS-based determination (SPE-SERS protocol). MTX has strong SERS signal only in alkaline media that challenges its determination in urine due to strong background signal caused by creatinine. The application of SPE step enables to purify and concentrate the analyte making MTX determination possible. Also, the application of the same material for SPE pretreatment and SERS analysis enables to simplify and speed-up the protocol. The protocol was developed and tested using artificially spiked samples of human urine collected during different time of day to account deviating composition of the urine matrix. The use of dilution step of the analyte-containing urine was proposed prior SPE-SERS protocol to reduce the difference between morning-time- and daytime-collected urine achieving maximal reliability of the analysis. Additional physicochemical study was performed to estimate an influence of the primary intrinsic urine components (salts, urea, creatinine) and their mixtures on the analytical signal. Final protocol enables MTX determination in human urine within 20–300 μg mL−1 range of concentrations with satisfactory precision (11–19% RSD), accuracy (97–104% apparent recovery), and limit of detection (4.2 μg mL−1). Accounting that the analysis requires less than 15 min and portable Raman spectrometer, the protocol seems to be promising for therapeutic drug monitoring in hospitals to identify poor MTX clearance in a timely manner and minimize adverse effects of therapy.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The work was supported by Russian Science Foundation (project 18-13-00081).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saratov State University, Astrakhanskaya 83, Saratov, 410012, Russia

    Natalia E. Markina, Andrey M. Zakharevich & Alexey V. Markin

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  1. Natalia E. Markina
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  2. Andrey M. Zakharevich
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  3. Alexey V. Markin
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Correspondence to Alexey V. Markin.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

Samples of human urine were provided by healthy volunteers (4 males and 2 females, 25–40 age range) and collected as spontaneously voided portions. All volunteers were provided with the complete description of the study and signed informed consent was collected from each volunteer before providing the urine samples. The samples were anonymized retaining only information about time of collection (morning-time- or daytime-collected urine). Approving the study by ethics committee was not performed because the analyte (methotrexate—an anticancer drug) was used only for artificial (in vitro) spiking of the collected urine samples and the participants did not administer it.

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Markina, N.E., Zakharevich, A.M. & Markin, A.V. Determination of methotrexate in spiked human urine using SERS-active sorbent. Anal Bioanal Chem 412, 7757–7766 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02932-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02932-x

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