SiM20 Posters

Sensors in Medicine 2020 6 Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies Investigation into the Sensitivity of Fluorescence Cannabinoid Detection Figure 2: FSFs of undegraded ( A ) and degraded ( B ) compound 2c , and a difference map between the two ( C ). FSFs have been created by scanning Figure 1: Model series of 8 compounds, based on the core, linker and ring section of AM-694. Compounds 1a-d contain a methanone linker and 2a-d contain an ethanone linker group, all with varied halogen-substitution at the 2- position. As of 2019, 169 synthetic cannabinoid (SC) compounds were known to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Detection. 1 This poses a major challenge in drug detection due to the vast number of possible compound found in SC samples. Fluorescence spectral fingerprinting (FSF) is a detection method that can indicate the presence of synthetic cannabinoids (SCs) in a sample. 2 The method relies on the absorption and fluorescence behaviour of the core indole and indazole sections of SCs, changing with respect to the substituents bound to the ring. This technique has been shown to detect a range of SC compounds, with possible evidence to show the concentration present. In order to investigate the sensitivity of this method, a QSAR series of compounds have been synthesised with small structural differences (figure 1). FSFs were created for the model compounds. All 8 compounds were observed to degrade under UV light. An example of the resultant FSFs and corresponding difference map is shown in figure 2, calculated for 2-(2-bromophenyl)-1-(1H-indol-3-yl)ethanone (compound 2c ). N O I F HN O X 1 1a: X = F 1b: X = Cl 1c: X = Br 1d : X = I AM-694 HN O X 2 2a: X = F 2b: X = Cl 2c: X = Br 2d : X = I