Nanomaterial-based electrochemical sensors in pharmaceutical applications

Drastic industrial development has occurred in the pharmaceutical field for the last two decades for the sake of public health. The modern trend in the pharmaceutical industry is to detect and to quantify various analytes in complex matrixes at submicron concentrations. Thus, the chemical sensors and biosensors with improved performances for rapid, reliable, efficient, and cost-effective monitoring are highly required in the pharmaceutical industry. During the last decade, the incorporation of nanomaterials into chemical sensors and biosensors has boosted the advances in this area leading to relevant enhancements of their performance. The chemical sensors and biosensors embedded with nanomaterials can lead to an increase in their applicability in all stages of drug development such as purity of the drug, stereochemistry of the manufactured drug, and chiral separation and enantio-specific detection of the desired drug from the matrix. Nanomaterials coupled devices can also play an important role in preclinical and real-world analysis such as drug delivery study of the developed drugs, drug-to-drug interaction, metabolic studies, drug excretion analysis, and drug detection. This chapter will provide an overview of the role of carbon nanomaterials in the pharmaceutical industry to develop the biosensors for detection of various drugs by using electrochemical methods.