Date of Award

Fall 2025

Language

English

Embargo Period

11-10-2025

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School/Department

Department of Chemistry

Program

Chemistry

First Advisor

Ryan Thurman

Second Advisor

Alexandar Shekhtman

Committee Members

Brian Gabriel

Keywords

Gas Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry, Metabolites, Drug Analogs

Subject Categories

Analytical Chemistry | Forensic Chemistry | Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutics | Organic Chemistry | Pharmacology | Toxicology

Abstract

Identification of fentanyl and its analogs in unknown samples is a frequent practice completed in forensic crime labs, as the fentanyl epidemic continues. With the continued increase in illicit drug use, crime labs are not able to keep up with the flooding of new fentanyl analogs being developed, resulting in new analogs slipping past the crime labs’ authority. This research is to start to develop a database of commonly found fentanyl analogs in New York State. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) is a widely used method for the detection and identification of illicit drugs in forensic crime labs. A database that contains fentanyl and its analogs allows for more efficient detection by NYS crime labs and others around the country. As substitutions to the fentanyl molecule can be made to slightly change the drug's composition, there are many modifications to work around the current law. Crime Labs don’t have the capacity to create a database of newly found or closely related analogs due to the backlog of samples needed to be processed in the community. In this paper we utilized many different comment techniques to identify fentanyl derivatives through Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), Liquid-Liquid Extraction, and GC-MS, to identify novel fentanyl analogs in a vulnerable population in New York State that can be used to benefit the forensic chemistry field.

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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