Electrochemical drug sensing with hydrophobic compound-adapted aptamers**

吸毒对公众健康和安全造成了许多不利影响(吸毒过量、车祸、犯罪……)。因此，简单、快速地检测非法药物走私和驾驶过程中的药物使用情况是至关重要的。后者在预计将于2018年大麻合法化的背景下尤其相关，并伴随着目前尚无适当检测技术的所谓“开车时零容忍”政策。检测往往依赖于非最佳目标。例如，研究表明，要评估大麻引起的驾驶损害，使用THC(大麻的主要活性成分)和代谢的THC分子的比率会更合适。同时，可卡因的挥发性衍生品对侦查毒品走私更有用。**目前大多数便携式技术使用抗体，这种抗体不能从其代谢物中识别THC，也不能与毒品中最挥发性的化合物(如可卡因衍生品)结合。这些药物及其衍生物的疏水性给寻找生物传感--识别它们的分子--带来了技术问题。我们计划通过将修饰适体(以量身定制的选择性识别目标分析物的DNA分子)与用于转导结合事件的电化学平台相结合来克服这一挑战。预计拟议的进展将导致用于简单、廉价、超灵敏和快速药物检测的生物传感器，这将有助于打击毒品走私，并为司机提供急需的大麻测试工具。**与有关的两家公司和为实现这些目标而组建的团队的合作伙伴关系结合了高水平的专业知识和基础设施，将为培训学生和PDF提供一个出色的环境。此外，它将有助于保持加拿大在适配子和生物传感研究方面的领先地位，并提供技术来解决加拿大目前存在的问题。

Drug usage is responsible for numerous adverse effects on public health and safety (overdoses, car accidents, crime...). Accordingly, simple and rapid detection of illicit drug smuggling and of drug usage during driving is of paramount importance. The latter is particularly relevant in the context of the expected 2018 marijuana legalization, accompanied with a so-called "zero-tolerance while driving" policy for which appropriate detection-technology is not currently available. Detection often relies on non-optimal targets. For example, studies indicate that to evaluate driving impairment induced by cannabis, it would be more appropriate to use a ratio of THC (the main active ingredient of marijuana) and metabolized THC molecules. In parallel, volatile derivatives of cocaine are more useful for detection of drug smuggling.** Most of the current portable technologies use antibodies, which do not discern THC from its metabolites and do not bind to the most volatile compounds derived from drugs (like cocaine derivatives). The hydrophobicity of these drugs and their derivatives poses technical problems to find biosensing-molecules that recognize them. We plan to overcome this challenge with modified aptamers (which are DNA molecules that recognize target analytes with a tailored selectivity) combined to an electrochemical platform for transduction of the binding event. The proposed advances are expected to lead to biosensors for simple, cheap, ultrasensitive and rapid drug detection which will help counter drug smuggling and provide much needed tools for cannabis testing for drivers.** The partnership with the two companies involved and the team put together to achieve these goals combines high level expertise and infrastructures that will provide an outstanding environment for the training of students and PDFs. In addition, it will contribute to keep Canada at the forefront of aptamer and biosensing research as well as provide technologies to solve very current problematics in Canada.******