Investigation of the adsorptive stripping voltammetric behaviour of the anticancer drugs chlorambucil and 5-fluorouracil

Abstract

Adsorptive stripping voltammetry provides highly sensitive determinations of the amounts of the anticancer drugs chlorambucil and 5-fluorouracil. A static mercury drop electrode is immersed in a stirred solution of the drug for a fixed time (60–300 s) at a suitable potential and the adsorbed species is then stripped in the linear scan mode. The pre-concentration potentials and stripping peak potentials (versus Ag-AgCl) are –0.6 and –1.30 V, respectively, for chlorambucil, and –0.25 and –0.42 V, respectively, for 5-fluorouracil. Cyclic voltammetry is used to explore the interfacial and redox behaviours. Short pre-concentration periods suffice to quantify chlorambucil and 5-fluorouracil down to the 3 × 10^–8 and 3 × 10^–9M levels, respectively. The effects of possible interferences indicate that routine clinical applications would require an appropriate sample pre-treatment procedure.