Potential transducers based man-tailored biomimetic sensors for selective recognition of dextromethorphan as an antitussive drug

• A molecularly imprinted polymer with special molecular recognition properties of Dextromethorphan was prepared.
• A poly(vinyl chloride) based sensor for DXM determination
• Detailed characterization of the sensors and validation of the assay method were reported.
• Application to pharmaceutical analysis

A biomimetic potentiometric sensor for specific recognition of dextromethorphan (DXM), a drug classified according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as a “drug of concern”, is designed and characterized. A molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP), with special molecular recognition properties of DXM, was prepared by thermal polymerization in which DXM acted as template molecule, methacrylic acid (MAA) and acrylonitrile (AN) acted as functional monomers in the presence of ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as crosslinker. The sensors showed a high selectivity and a sensitive response to the template in aqueous system. Electrochemical evaluation of these sensors revealed near-Nernstian response with slopes of 49.6 ± 0.5 and 53.4 ± 0.5 mV decade− 1 with a detection limit of 1.9 × 10− 6, and 1.0 × 10− 6 mol L− 1 DXM with MIP/MAA and MIP/AN membrane based sensors, respectively. Significantly improved accuracy, precision, response time, stability, selectivity and sensitivity were offered by these simple and cost-effective potentiometric sensors compared with other standard techniques. The method has the requisite accuracy, sensitivity and precision to assay DXM in pharmaceutical products.

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