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（过量用药、车祸、犯罪……）。因此，简单而迅速地发现非法毒品走私和在驾驶时使用毒品是极为重要的。后者在预计2018年大麻合法化的背景下尤为重要，伴随着所谓的“驾驶时零容忍”政策，目前还没有合适的检测技术。检测通常依赖于非最佳目标。例如，研究表明，为了评估大麻引起的驾驶障碍，使用四氢大麻酚（大麻的主要活性成分）与代谢四氢大麻酚分子的比例更为合适。与此同时，可卡因的挥发性衍生物对侦查毒品走私更为有用。

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.