Highly selective BSA imprinted polyacrylamide hydrogels facilitated by a metal-coding MIP approach

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Polymer Chemistry
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are synthetic receptors with tailored recognition properties.
• Hydrogel-based MIPs (HydroMIPs) offer advantages in biocompatibility and processability.
• Protein recognition and biosensing applications require highly selective and sensitive materials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To fabricate metal-coded HydroMIPs for enhanced protein imprinting.
• To investigate the effect of metal-ion/ligand complex co-monomers on protein binding.
• To evaluate the selectivity and binding capacity of the developed MIPs for bovine serum albumin (BSA).

Main Methods:

• Synthesis of a Cobalt(II) complex using a specific phenol derivative.
• Incorporation of metal complexes (Co(II), Hemin, VFc, ZnPP, PP) as co-monomers into hydrogel MIPs.
• Characterization of hydrogels using thermal analysis and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).
• Evaluation of protein binding capacity (Q) and imprinting factors (IF) for BSA and other proteins.

Main Results:

• Metal-coded MIPs demonstrated a 66% enhancement in BSA binding capacity compared to non-coded MIPs.
• Co(II)-complex based MIPs achieved 92 ± 1% specific binding for BSA, with Q = 5.7 ± 0.45 mg/g and IF = 14.8 ± 1.9.
• Co(II)-coded BSA MIPs exhibited higher affinity for BSA compared to bovine haemoglobin, lysozyme, and trypsin, indicating high selectivity.

Conclusions:

• HydroMIPs technology with metal-coding offers a promising approach for selective protein recognition.
• The developed metal-coded MIPs can serve as cost-effective alternatives to antibodies in immunoassays and biosensors.
• This technology has potential applications in bio-sample clean-up, selective extraction, and the development of advanced biosensors for environmental and medical diagnostics.