Molecular imprinting: A useful approach for drug delivery

Abstract

Molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs) is an artificial receptor of target molecules and functions as biomimetic way of natural antibody-antigen systems. Their mechanism can be understood from lock and key mechanism, thus indicating that MIPs selectively bind the molecule with which they were templated during synthesis. Among many beneficial applications of MIPs, drug delivery is considered an excellent and promising method of sustained release of drug to achieve desired therapeutic results. Thus, many scientists devoted their research to learn the potential method of their synthesis and to improve the control release of imprinted drugs in desired environment. In this review, we focus and comprehensively explains about MIPs as drug delivery systems (DDS) and their progress in last 3 years. In the end, the challenges faced during their synthesis and applications are discussed.