When an anthropogenic event occurs, many toxicants are released into the environment. These toxicants are hazardous to animals, humans, and plant life, and they are often difficult to identify rapidly, sensitively, and selectively in complex environments. Precise detection of these toxicants is critical for first responders, medical professionals, and biomedical researchers to assess the extent of contamination, potential health risks, and long term environmental and physiological damage. Reported herein is the use of γ-cyclodextrin to accomplish rapid, sensitive, selective, and generally applicable detection of toxicants and toxicant metabolites in breast milk, by binding both the toxicant and a small molecule fluorophore simultaneously in the cavity of the cyclodextrin. The detection of these toxicants in breast milk is particularly crucial, as mothers may be able to pass along any exposure to toxicants along to their children via breast milk. By screening the breast milk, further confidence can be made on whether a child should also be screened or treated, even if they were never initially exposed. Breast milk’s use as an array matrix will allow medical professionals to rapidly screen both mothers and children to assess the presence of carcinogens as well as their levels of carcinogen exposure and allow for quicker treatment.<br/>This cyclodextrin-based detection relies on the formation of ternary complexes, which allows the toxicant to participate directly in energy transfer with the fluorophore. Upon excitation of the toxicant, energy transfer occurs to the fluorophore held in close proximity, resulting in a unique, highly fluorescent turn-on emission signal from the fluorophore. The modular nature of this energy transfer allows the emission signal of the analyte to be tuned through a choice of a fluorophore, which enables the development of a selective array-based detection system, wherein each toxicant and toxicant metabolite has a unique response pattern with a variety of fluorophores bound in the cyclodextrin cavity. Results of selective array-based detection in breast milk are also reported herein.

Array-based detection of carcinogens and carcinogen metabolites in breast milk

251st National Meeting (2016)

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