Electrochemical molecularly imprinted polymer based sensors for pharmaceutical and biomedical applications (review)

Recent challenges in the pharmaceutical and biomedical fields require the development of new analytical methods. Therefore, the development of new sensors is a very important task. In this paper, we are outlining the development of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) based sensors, which belongs to important branch of affinity sensors. In this review, recent advances in the design of MIP-based sensors are overviewed. MIPs-based sensing structures can replace expensive natural affinity compounds such as receptors or antibodies. Among many different polymers, conducting polymers show the most versatile properties, which are suitable for sensor application. Therefore, significant attention is paid towards MIPs based on conducting polymers, namely polypyrrole, polythiophene, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), polyaniline and ortho-phenylenediamine. Moreover, many other materials, which could be imprinted analyte molecules, are overviewed. Among many conducting polymers, polypyrrole is highlighted as one of the most suitable for molecular imprinting. Some attention is dedicated to overview polymerization methods applied for the design of sensing structures used in various affinity sensors. The transduction of analytical signal is an important issue, therefore, physicochemical methods suitable for analytical signal transduction are also outlined. Advances, trends and perspectives in MIP application are discussed.