Tackling water contamination by oncologic drugs: Supported ionic liquids as sustainable adsorbents for cyclophosphamide removal

abstract

Due to the increasing incidence of cancer, the consumption of highly toxic oncological drugs is continuously growing. Given the current lack of efficient technologies to remove/treat these toxic drugs in wastewater treatment plants, the environmental quality is compromised, and aquatic organisms are at risk. To address this critical environmental burden, a new strategy based on supported ionic liquids (SILs) for the simultaneous removal of oncologic drugs and toxicity reduction of aqueous samples is here proposed. Silica-based SILs functionalized with imidazolium-based and quaternary ammonium-based ILs were designed and kinetics and isotherm adsorption studies performed. Aiming to develop an adsorbent able to reduce the toxicity of aqueous samples contaminated with oncological drugs, the toxicity reduction was appraised using the model organism Danio rerio. The obtained results disclose that among the studied SILs, the [Si][N3888]Cl (silica functionalized with propyltrioctylammonium chloride) is the best adsorption material (maximum adsorption capacity, qmax = 67.64 mg g(- 1)), with a fast adsorption rate (<20 min). Furthermore, [Si][N-3888]Cl was able to remove the toxicity of the treated aqueous samples towards D. rerio embryos, as assessed by lethal and several sublethal endpoints, demonstrating that this material holds remarkable potential for oncological drugs pollution remediation.

keywords

PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS; ANTICANCER DRUGS; CYTOSTATIC DRUGS; DRINKING-WATER; SURFACE WATERS; ADSORPTION; PHARMACEUTICALS; 5-FLUOROURACIL; WASTEWATERS; IFOSFAMIDE

subject category

Environmental Sciences & Ecology

authors

Francisco, R; Monteiro, B; Santos, MJ; Silva, FAE; Venancio, C; Neves, MC; Lopes, I; Sousa, ACA; Freire, MG

Groups

G5 - Biomimetic, Biological and Living Materials

Projects

CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials (UIDB/50011/2020)

CICECO - Aveiro Institute of Materials (UIDP/50011/2020)

Associated Laboratory CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials (LA/P/0006/2020)

Rede Nacional de Ressonância Magnética Nuclear (PTNMR)

Desenvolvimento de dispositivos baseados em líquidos iónicos para a remoção de citostáticos de urina excretados por pacientes oncológicos (IonCytDevice)

Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies, CoLab (EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES)

acknowledgements

This work was developed within the scope of the project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, UIDB/50011/2020 (DOI 10.54499/UIDB/50011/2020), UIDP/50011/2020 (DOI 10.54499/UIDP/50011/2020) & LA/P/0006/2020 (DOI 10.54499/LA/P/0006/2020) and CESAM UIDP/50017/2020, UIDB/50017/2020 and LA/P/0094/2020, financed by national funds through the FCT/MEC (PIDDAC), and the Comprehensive Health Research Centre (CHRC) project UIDP/04923/2020. The NMR spectrometers are part of the National NMR Network (PTNMR) and are partially supported by Infrastructure Project N degrees 022161 (co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE 2020; POCI and PORL and FCT through PIDDAC) . This work was financially supported by the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031106 (IonCytDevice) funded by FEDER, through COMPETE2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI) , and by national funds (OE) , through FCT/MCTES. M. C. Neves and F. A. e Silva acknowledge FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, I.P. for the researcher contracts CEECIND/00383/2017/CP1459/CT0031 (DOI 10.54499/CEECIND/00383/2017/CP1459/CT0031) and CEECIND/03076/2018/CP1559/CT0024 (DOI 10.54499/CEECIND/03076/2018/CP1559/CT0024) under the Scientific Employment Stimulus-Individual Calls 2017; 2018, respectively.