Toxicological study of the degradation products of antineoplastic agent etoposide in commercial formulation treated by heterogeneous photocatalysis using SrSnO3

Abstract

Etoposide is an antineoplastic agent used for treating lung cancer, testicular cancer, breast cancer, pediatric cancers, and lymphomas. It is a pollutant due to its mutagenic and carcinogenic potential. Disposal of waste from this drug is still insufficiently safe, and there is no appropriate waste treatment. Therefore, it is important to use advanced oxidative processes (AOPs) for the treatment and disposal of medicines like this. The use of strontium stannate (SrSnO) as a catalyst in heterogeneous photocatalysis reactions has emerged as an alternative for the removal of organic pollutants. In our study, SrSnO was synthesized by the combustion method and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, UV-Vis, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques, obtaining a surface area of 3.28 m g with cubic and well-organized crystallinity and a band gap of 4.06 eV. The experimental conditions optimized for degradation of an etoposide solution (0.4 mg L) were pH 5 and catalyst concentration of 1 g L. The results showed that the degradation processes using SrSnO combined with HO (0.338 mol L) obtained total organic carbon removal from the etoposide solution, 97.98% (± 4.03 × 10), compared with TiO, which obtained a mineralization rate of 72.41% (± 6.95 × 10-3). After photodegradation, the degraded solution showed no toxicity to zebrafish embryos through embryotoxicity test (OECD, 236), and no genotoxicity using comet assay and micronucleus test.

Photocatalysis Using UV-A and UV-C Light Sources for Advanced Oxidation of Anti-Cancer Drugs Spiked in Laboratory-Grade Water and Synthetic Urine

“…Unlike cyclophosphamide and ifosfamide, etoposide degradation was detected in all tests and improved by catalyst presence as presented in Figure 5. This is not a novel result as UVs 44 and UV/TiO 2 45 are reported to be efficient processes in the literature for the removal of etoposide. The number of conjugated double-bond systems (π bonds) present in the etoposide and paclitaxel molecules (see Figure 1) can explain why UV-C photons are able to directly excite bonds, which breaks during relaxation, inducing drug degradation.…”

Pt Nanoparticles Embedded Polypyrrole‐Carbon Black/SrSnO3 Photocatalyst with Stable and Superior Photodegradation Performance

“…[46][47][48] SrSnO 3 has been extensively utilized in electronic devices, [49] humidity sensors, [50] lithium-ion batteries, [51] capacitors, [52] etc. Besides this, SrSnO 3 worked effectively as a photocatalyst towards the degradation of 4-nitrophenol, [53] methylene blue, [54] remazol golden yellow, [55] antineoplastic agent, [56] and generation of H 2 . [57,58] However, one major drawback with this semiconductor is its larger band gap (~4.0 eV) restricted its use only under high energy UV radiation.…”