A novel L-leucine modified Sol-Gel-Carbon electrode for simultaneous electrochemical detection of homovanillic acid, dopamine and uric acid in neuroblastoma diagnosis

Neuroblastoma is a pediatric neuroblastic tumor arising in the sympathetic nervous crest cells. A high grade of Neuroblastoma is characterized by a high urinary excretion of homovanillic acid and dopamine. In this work L-leucine modified Sol-Gel-Carbon electrode was used for a sensitive voltammetric determination of homovanillic acid and dopamine in urine. The electrochemical response characteristics were investigated by cyclic and differential pulse voltammetry; the modified electrode has shown an increase in the effective area of up to 40%, a well-separated oxidation peaks and an excellent electrocatalytic activity. High sensitivity and selectivity in the linear range of 0,4–100 μM L^{− 1} of homovanillic acid and 10–120 μM L^{− 1} of dopamine were also obtained. Moreover, a sub-micromolar limit of detection of 0.1 μM for homovanillic acid and 1.0 μM for the dopamine was achieved. Indeed, high reproducibility with simple preparation and regeneration of the electrode surface made this electrode very suitable for the determination of homovanillic acid and dopamine in pharmaceutical and clinical preparations. The mechanism of homovanillic acid and the electrochemical oxidation at L-leucine modified Sol-Gel-Carbon electrode is described out the B3P86/6-31 + G(d,p) level of theory as implemented in Gaussian software.