Intramolecular charge transfer-induced fluorescence enhancement of carbon dots for rapid detection of sugammadex sodium and clinical injection sample analysis

In order to improve the current analytical method for the detection of sugammadex sodium (SUG), the common clinical neuromuscular blockade reversal agent, a carbon dots (CDs) based fluorescent detection method was designed and developed in this work. Nitrogen-doped CDs were selected as the fluorescence nanomaterials considering the unique combination of SUG with amino-steroid drugs. The fluorescence of CDs was efficiently enhanced once interacting with SUG and the underlying mechanism was studied to be the intermolecular charge transfer process between −NH 2 in CDs and −COOH in SUG. Therefore, the novel fluorescence detection method was established according to the sensitive response of CDs toward SUG. Under the optimized conditions, the linear ranges of 0.001−0.07 and 0.07−0.5 g/L was achieved with a detection limit of 0.44 mg/L. Furthermore, the method was applied to the clinical injection sample analysis and accurate results with validity was obtained. The fluorescence detection method with sensitivity and selectivity for SUG assay was proposed in this work. Compared to the traditional analytical method for SUG like chromatography and mass spectrometry, the merits of this fluorescence method, quick response and handy operation, made it a powerful assay for pharmaceutical analysis, improving the rapid analysis for SUG pharmaceutical.