New sorbent materials for selective extraction of cocaine and benzoylecgonine from human urine samples

• Design and synthesis of the new molecularly imprinted sorbent media.
• New template molecules in computational design and synthesis of sorbent media.
• Selective extraction of cocaine and benzoylecgonine from urine samples.

An increase in cocaine consumption has been observed in Europe during the last decade. Benzoylecgonine, as a main urinary metabolite of cocaine in human, is so far the most reliable marker of cocaine consumption. Determination of cocaine and its metabolite in complex biological samples as urine or blood, requires efficient and selective sample pretreatment. In this preliminary study, the newly synthesized sorbent materials were proposed for selective extraction of cocaine and benzoylecgonine from urine samples. Application of these sorbent media allowed to determine cocaine and benzoylecgonine in urine samples at the concentration level of 100 ng/ml with good recovery values as 81.7% ± 6.6 and 73.8% ± 4.2, respectively. The newly synthesized materials provided efficient, inexpensive and selective extraction of both cocaine and benzoylecgonine from urine samples, which can consequently lead to an increase of the sensitivity of the current available screening diagnostic tests.

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