Recent advances in immunosensor for narcotic drug detection.

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Biotechnology
• Materials Science

Background:

• Immunosensors for illicit drug detection are gaining interest for drug abuse monitoring.
• This technology provides a low-cost method for narcotics detection, complementing existing analytical techniques.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent advances in immunoanalytical techniques for opiate drug monitoring.
• To define the concept of transducers for immunosensor development utilizing antibodies and hapten molecules.

Main Methods:

• Review of transducer technologies for immunosensor development.
• Utilizing antibodies and low molecular mass hapten molecules for immunosensor construction.
• Exploration of various detection methods including immunochromatography, enzyme-based, fluorescence, gold nanoparticles, and carbon nanotubes.

Main Results:

• High-quality antibodies are crucial for developing immunosensors with superior sensitivity, specificity, and precision against target analytes.
• Demonstrated advances in immunoanalytical techniques for opiate drug monitoring.

Conclusions:

• Immunosensor development using different transducer technologies offers sensitive and specific monitoring of opiates.
• Highlighting laboratory-developed rapid screening and label-free optical detection methods for opiate monitoring.