Detection of human growth hormone (hGH) and anabolic steroids using cyclodextrin promoted fluorescence modulation

Reported herein are our efforts towards the development of cyclodextrin-based systems for the detection of hGH and steroids that are of interest in illegal doping scandals. These systems, in close analogy to other systems developed in our group, rely on the fact that combining the target analytes with a high quantum yield fluorophore results in a measurable, analyte-specific change in the fluorophore emission signal. Promising results were seen in our solution-state detection of anabolic steroids via the use of β-cyclodextrin as a supramolecular scaffold and Rhodamine 6G as the signal transducing element. Preliminary results in the detection of human growth hormone led to a measurable change in the fluorescence of a BODIPY fluorophore in the presence of HGH compared to the fluorescence in the absence of the HGH analyte, which strongly suggests that such a system can be used for an HGH detection system. Current efforts are focused on improving the reproducibility of these experiments to enable a high functioning detection system.