Potential of enzymatic process as an innovative technology to remove anticancer drugs in wastewater

Anticancer drugs are a class of pharmaceutical compounds that have been found in hospital, domestic, and industrial wastewaters and also in surface waters. They have been showing recalcitrance to conventional wastewater treatment technologies and present a potential risk to environment and human health, since they exhibit cytotoxic, teratogenic, and carcinogenic among other effects in higher organisms, even at low concentrations. The presence of these compounds in the environment is a recent challenge for wastewater treatment and some alternative strategies to remove them were already studied, such as white-rot fungi (WRF) technologies. Despite promising results, processes involving fungi are complex, have high reaction times, and require nutrient addition for fungus growth and maintenance. Due to this potential, strategies to make the technology feasible were studied, such as the possibility for direct application of enzymes secreted by WRF. Enzymatic processes were studied in the removal of other pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatory, and steroid hormones; however, to the best of our knowledge, there is a gap on literature about their direct action on anticancer drugs.