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Detection of low-quantity anticancer drugs by surface-enhanced Raman scattering

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Abstract

Ultrasensitive detection of low-quantity drugs is important for personalized therapeutic approaches in several diseases and, in particular, for cancer treatment. In this field, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) can be very useful for its ability to precisely identify analytes from their unique vibrational spectra, with very high sensitivity. Here, we report a study about SERS detection of sunitinib, paclitaxel and irinotecan, i.e. three commonly used antineoplastic drugs, and of SN-38, i.e. the metabolite of irinotecan, dissolved in methanol solutions. By using commercial Klarite substrates, we found that sunitinib, irinotecan and SN-38 have detection limits of 20–70 ng, which is below the threshold for applications in cancer therapy. Conversely, the SERS signal was not appreciable with paclitaxel, and this is explained by the absence of optical resonances in the visible range. Overall, our results show that ultrasensitive SERS detection of sunitinib, irinotecan and SN-38 is feasible, encouraging further development of this technology also for other drugs with similar molecular structure especially for those analytes with absorption bands in the visible range.

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Acknowledgments

Dr. Elena Marangon is gratefully acknowledged for useful discussions. We acknowledge the AIRC 5x1000 grant “Application of Advanced Nanotechnology in the Development of Innovative Cancer Diagnostics Tools” and University of Padova grant (PRAT) no. CPDA114097/11.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Via Marzolo 1, 35131, Padova, Italy

    Lucio Litti, Vincenzo Amendola & Moreno Meneghetti

  2. CRO National Cancer Institute Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology Division, Department of Translational Research, IRCCS, Via Franco Gallini 2, 33081, Aviano, Italy

    Giuseppe Toffoli

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  1. Lucio Litti
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  2. Vincenzo Amendola
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  3. Giuseppe Toffoli
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Correspondence to Vincenzo Amendola.

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Supporting information: additional experimental details and results, peak assignments, PCA results and factors of relevance for SERS assays

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Litti, L., Amendola, V., Toffoli, G. et al. Detection of low-quantity anticancer drugs by surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Anal Bioanal Chem 408, 2123–2131 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-016-9315-4

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