Date of Graduation

5-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Chemistry & Biochemistry

Advisor/Mentor

Stenken, Julie

Committee Member/Reader

Kumar, Suresh

Committee Member/Second Reader

Kumar, Suresh

Committee Member/Third Reader

Kilyanek, Stefan

Abstract

Finding alternate methods to measure and isolate interstitial fluid in vivo has become a consequence of the limited recovery of analytes when using a probe.1 These probes consist of an inlet constantly bringing perfusate into a semi-permeable membrane where the perfusate is replace with dialysate containing numerous analytes. The dialysate leaves the semi-permeable membrane via an outlet. A wick technique has been shown to be useful in analytical chemistry because it can be used to effectively isolate interstitial fluid and accurately measure the concentrations of various analytes. For long-term applications, wicks can be used to measure the concentrations of cytokines and other small proteins in vivo. This research focuses on obtaining the percent recovery of methyl orange and FITC-4000 using a wick technique in vitro. The wick technique used in these experiments consisted of extracting the fluid from the wick using a centrifuge method and then analyzing the fluid using UV-Vis Spectrophotometry. It was determined that the percent recovery for methyl orange using the wick technique was 88.3% ± 1.4% (n=9). Within methyl orange, it was experimentally found that the percent recovery of methyl orange for 1 cm unwound wicks, 3 cm unwound wicks and 3 cm wound wicks was 90.1% ± 1.7% (n=3), 90.4% ± 3.0% (n=3), and 79.8% ± 1.7% (n=3) respectively. The percent recovery for the FITC-4000 using the wick technique was determined to be 84.5% ± 1.5% (n=9). The results of this work suggest that the wick technique used in these experiments can be used to efficiently recover various small analytes.

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