ABSTRACT
Evolution has created biopolymers showing high chemical selectivity
and catalytic power. As an alternative to the generation of binders and
catalysts on the basis of amino acids and nucleotides, totally synthetic
molecularly imprinted polymers (MIP) have been conceptualized by
—ŽơǡŠ‡ƒǡƒ†‘•„ƒ…ŠǤ In general, molecular imprinting is a methodology used to
create recognition sites in synthetic polymers by co-polymerizing
a functional and a cross-linking monomer in the presence of the
target analyte. This imprint molecule acts as a molecular template
Rajagopal Rajkumar,a Umporn Athikomrattanakul,a Kristian Lettau,b Martin Katterle,a Bengt Danielsson,c Axel Warsinke,b Nenad GajovicEichelmann,a and Frieder W. Schellera a Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering, D-14476, Potsdam, Germany b University of Potsdam, D-14476, Potsdam, Germany c Acromed Invest AB, S-22643 Lund, Sweden fschell@uni-potsdam.de
by the interaction with the complementary groups of the functional
monomer and arranges the cross-linker to resemble the molecular
shape. In the pre-polymerization mixture, the dissolved target
interacts by covalent or non-covalent binding with the functional
monomer responsible for localizing the chemically active moieties
of the target molecules during co-polymerization. Consequently,
‘Ž‡…—Žƒ” ‹’”‹–‹‰ ‹• …Žƒ••‹ϐ‹‡† ‹–‘ …‘˜ƒŽ‡– ‹’”‹–‹‰ ȋ’”‡Ǧ organized approach) and non-covalent imprinting (self-assembly
approach) according to the type of interactions between functional
monomer and target molecules in the pre-polymerization mixture
ƒ† †—”‹‰ ”‡„‹†‹‰Ǥ Š‡ ’‹‘‡‡”‹‰ •–—†‹‡• „› —Žơ et al. [1] involved a covalent linkage of the template molecule to the functional
monomers before polymerization. The alternative approach using
non-covalent interaction of the functional monomers with the
template molecule during polymerization was introduced in the
early 1980s by the group of Mosbach [2].
