title: Recent advances in immunosensor for narcotic drug detection.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Immunosensor for illicit drugs have gained immense interest and have found several applications for drug abuse monitoring. This technology has offered a low cost detection of narcotics; thereby, providing a confirmatory platform to compliment the existing analytical methods.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this minireview, we define the basic concept of transducer for immunosensor development that utilizes antibodies and low molecular mass hapten (opiate) molecules.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This article emphasizes on recent advances in immunoanalytical techniques for monitoring of opiate drugs. Our results demonstrate that high quality antibodies can be used for immunosensor development against target analyte with greater sensitivity, specificity and precision than other available analytical methods.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this review we highlight the fundamentals of different transducer technologies and its applications for immunosensor development currently being developed in our laboratory using rapid screening via immunochromatographic kit, label free optical detection via enzyme, fluorescence, gold nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes based immunosensing for sensitive and specific monitoring of opiates.
authors.affiliation: Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Noida, India.
authors.forename: Sonu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gandhi
authors.affiliation: Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Noida, India.
authors.forename: Pankaj
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Suman
authors.affiliation: CSIR- Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi, India.
authors.forename: Ashok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.
authors.forename: Prince
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Biotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.
authors.forename: Neena
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Capalash
authors.affiliation: CSIR- Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, India.
authors.forename: C Raman
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Suri
keywords: Aptasensor; Immunoanalytical techniques; Immunosensor; Narcotic drugs; Transducer