Biomedicine Application of Nano-Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (NanoMIPs)

Abstract

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are synthetic polymeric structures that selectively recognize the molecule of interest which is imprinted as template. In contrast to antibodies, which have certain limitations such as high cost, time-consuming optimization, and need expert for antibody production, MIPs can be fabricated against many molecules and has simple experiment procedure. Molecular imprinting has been applied in the areas of biomedical and analytical chemistry. The analytical applications of MIPs are chromatography, solid-phase extraction, catalysis, and sensor. The biomedical applications utilizing MIPs are enzyme-linked assays, sensors, in vivo applications, drug delivery, and cancer diagnostics that can be named as nanomedicine. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have been widely used in nanomedicine during the last few years. Recent attempts in creating hybrid nanomaterials combining MIPs with inorganic nanomaterials succeeded in providing a wide range of interesting new properties suitable for nanomedicine (drug delivery, in vitro and in vivo imaging, treatments, and combinations). In this review, firstly we highlight the nanomaterials which are used for preparing hybrid nanoMIPs. The recent examples in nanomedicine applications including biosensing, drug delivery, cell imaging are summarized.