ABSTRACT
Fast, reliable, and inexpensive analytical techniques for detection of airborne chemical warfare agents are desperately needed. Recent advances in the field of molecularly imprinted polymers have created synthetic nanomaterials that can sensitively and selectively detect these materials in aqueous environments, but thus far, they have not been demonstrated to work for detection of vapors. The imprinted polymers function by mimicking the function of biological receptors. They can provide high sensitivity and selectivity but, unlike their biological counterparts, maintain excellent thermal and mechanical stability. The traditional imprinted polymer approach is further enhanced in this work by the addition of a luminescent europium that has been introduced into the polymers to provide enhanced chemical affinity as well as a method for signal transduction to indicate the binding event. The europium in these polymers is so sensitive to the bound target; it can distinguish between species differing by a single methyl group. The imprinted polymer technology is fiber optic-based making it inexpensive and easily integratable with commercially available miniature fiber optic spectrometer technologies to provide a shoebox size device. In this work, we will describe efforts to apply these sensors for detection of airborne materials and vapors. Successful application of this technology will provide accurate low level vapor detection of chemical agents or pesticides with little to no false positives.
Subject(s)
Aerosols/analysis , Gases/analysis , Molecular Imprinting , Polymers/chemistry , Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid , Coordination Complexes/chemistry , Europium/chemistry , Limit of Detection , Luminescent Agents/chemistry , Organophosphorus Compounds/analysis , Organophosphorus Compounds/chemistry , Reference Standards , Solid Phase Microextraction , Soman/analogs & derivatives , Soman/analysis , Soman/chemistry , Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet/standardsABSTRACT
A key process in the development of new drugs is elucidation of the interaction between the drug molecule and the target protein. Such knowledge then makes it possible to make systematic structural modifications of the drug molecule to optimize the interaction. Many analytical techniques can be applied to proteins in solution such as circular dichroism, ultraviolet, and fluorescence spectroscopy but these all have limitations. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using relatively simple, visible light Raman spectroscopic methods to investigate amino acids and related biopolymers.
Subject(s)
Amino Acids/chemistry , Spectrum Analysis, Raman/methods , Animals , Biopolymers/chemistry , Cattle , Insulin/chemistry , Peptides/chemistry , Polymers/chemistry , Toluene/chemistryABSTRACT
Recent American Food and Drug Administration guidelines have effectively determined that mixtures of chiral compounds can no longer be brought to the pharmaceuticals marketplace. These guidelines require a means for chiral detection and compound separation. This article describes separation and detection of chiral pharmaceuticals using HPLC with circular dichroism detection. Two over-the-counter (OTC) medications, Prilosec and naproxen sodium, along with the prescription drugs Naproxen, Nexium, and Coumadin were analyzed using HPLC with CD, UV, and optical rotation (OR) detection. In all cases the CD and UV detectors displayed a much greater sensitivity than the OR detector. Although in many cases the UV detector did have a slightly better sensitivity than the CD detector, the CD detector had the advantage of only responding to the chiral compounds, eliminating the possibility of interference with the peaks of interest.
