Supported Ionic Liquids as New Strategies to Reduce Toxicity of Cyclophosphamide in Aqueous Solutions

Abstract

Cancer prevalence increased rapidly over the last decades, with over 18 million new cancer cases in 2018. Consequently, the consumption of anti-cancer drugs such as cytostatics also increased. Given the expected escalation in cancer cases, and as a consequence in the consumption of cytostatics, it is expected that the levels of these highly toxic compounds in the urban water cycle will rise. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective treatment/removal strategies in order to prevent the contamination of aquatic environment. In this line, supported ionic liquids (SILs) can be considered as suitable materials to remove cytostatics from aqueous samples. In this work, several SILs using silica as the support material were synthesized and characterized. Their adsorption capacity for the model cytostatic cyclophosphamide was evaluated by the determination of adsorption kinetics and isotherms. Based on the potential of the prepared SILs to be used as alternative adsorbents for the removal of cyclophosphamide, the performance of the best SIL to decrease the toxicity of a cyclophosphamide rich aqueous sample was also evaluated. Overall, the results demonstrate that the modification of the ionic liquid cation structure significantly improves the removal of cyclophosphamide from aqueous samples.