Rapid Assessment of Illicit Drugs in Wastewater

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Opioid crisis (abuse and misuse) is an epidemic of global concern to public health and safety, causing over 70,000 deaths annually in the United States. Obtaining real-time data on the use of opioids is a major challenge as this information is limited to population surveys and drug surveillance data. There is an urgent public health need for monitoring tools to achieve crucial insight into the prevalence of opioid misuse/abuse without stigmatizing communities. Wastewater monitoring is a proven strategy to identify areas needing intervention instead of relying on emergency-room statistics and overdose deaths. However, current wastewater drug analysis requires costly laboratory-based tests that involves labor intensive sample collection, transportation, and analysis, resulting in long (days) turnaround times. Giner proposes to develop a compact, portable, label-free Graphene Field Effect Transistor (G-FET) sensor utilizing high-specificity aptamers for rapid, accurate, cost-effective, and multiplexing monitoring of opioid drug metabolites in wastewater samples. Since it generates rapid results compared to incumbent methods which rely on batch sampling of wastewater streams followed by expensive, time consuming analysis, this technology will provide actionable real time data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent methods, encouraging broad use. The goal of Phase II program is to demonstrate a field-ready prototype and a test methodology for simultaneous detection of multiple opioid metabolites in wastewater at pg/mL levels. During the Phase I work, Giner successfully detected three opioid metabolites in wastewater samples that are also associated with street heroin use: Norfentanyl (a metabolite of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid), EDDP (a metabolite of methadone, fully synthetic opioid), and Noroxycodone (a semisynthetic opioid, metabolite of oxycodone). We will also add Morphine (main heroine metabolite, a natural opioid) to our Phase II program. Multiple samples from wastewater treatment plants will be analyzed with Giner’s sensor and results will be cross-validated using the gold standard HPLC-MS/MS method. Giner will achieve this by using its prior expertise in bio/sensors and wastewater testing and in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and environmental wastewater epidemiologists. Once developed, the technology will also be suitable for detection of any target illicit drug for which an aptamer can be prepared.