Selective Recognition of Bile Acids by Molecular Imprints

Developing molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) as selective recognition elements for chemical sensors and biosensors is a promising technique that has wide applications in environmental and biological analysis. Previous work in our research group has introduced novel chemical sensors based on MIPs in combination with infrared evanescent field spectroscopy. Here, molecularly imprinted polymers for selective recognition of bile acids were prepared by the non-covalent approach. Our results indicate that almost no imprinting effect was achieved when using methacrylic acid (MAA) as the functional monomer and THF as the porogenic solvent, even with a variety of cross-linkers. However, using 4-vinylpyridine as functional building block successful imprinting of bile acids was demonstrated using the synthesized MIPs as stationary phase material in HPLC analysis, where individual separation and accurate quantification of bile acids derivatives enables early detection and monitoring of various diseases associated with these constituents.