Surface Molecular Imprints: A Versatile Tool for Biomimetic Detection
Peter Lieberzeit,
Professor,
University of Vienna
It is a key goal of chemistry to mimic the functionality of biospecies in man-made, processable materials. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIP) represent an interesting strategy to achieve this goal: They are based on template-directed synthesis, where the analyte-to-be acts as the template that defines the size and shape of cavities generated in the final material. In the case of larger – biological – analyte species, surface imprinting turned out the most useful method: proteins, viruses and bacteria are too large to be removed from the bulk of a polymer material and slow diffusion would strongly hinder re-uptake of the respective species. During our work, we developed a range of surface imprinting strategies – one-step imprinting, sedimentation imprinting and stamp-imprinting – that have lead to very appreciable results. The talk will highlight different strategies to synthesize and optimize materials. Furthermore, it will show some recent examples of the groups work, e.g. in detecting lipoproteins in diagnostic samples or hematological tests.
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