Abstract
Molecular recognition is a useful property shared by various molecules, such as antibodies, aptamers and molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). It allows these molecules to be potentially involved in many applications including biological and pharmaceutical research, diagnostics, theranostics, therapy and drug delivery. Antibodies, naturally produced by plasma cells, have been exploited for this purpose, but they present noticeable drawbacks, above all production cost and time. Therefore, several research studies for similar applications have been carried out about MIPs and the main studies are reported in this review. MIPs, indeed, are more versatile and cost-effective than conventional antibodies, but the lack of toxicity studies and their scarce use for practical applications, make it that further investigations on this kind of molecules need to be conducted.
Highlights
Molecular recognition is a desired ability for molecules involved in various technological applications, in particular in the field of life sciences
The molecular imprinting technique consists of the polymerization of monomers in the presence of a target molecule, which acts as a template during the synthesis of the polymer
A horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-template conjugate was used and the sensitivity was much higher than in other ELISA tests [121]. All these studies demonstrated that molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) nanoparticles, obtained by solid-phase synthesis, can find application in the development of pseudo-ELISA assays for the detection of target molecules in real samples and characterized by high selectivity and sensitivity and other advantages including the impact on time and cost of production cycles compared to traditional ELISA
Summary
Molecular recognition is a desired ability for molecules involved in various technological applications, in particular in the field of life sciences Molecules with this property, are able to selectively bind compounds with biological importance (biomarkers such as microorganisms’ proteins and toxins, proteins and metabolites expressed in particular pathological conditions including cancer and autoimmune diseases), mainly for diagnostic, theranostic, pharmacological, drug delivery and research uses. Molecules of this type are present in nature, such as antibodies, which are normally produced by immune cells. This review is about molecules with molecular recognition capabilities, starting from antibodies and focusing on the more recent molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), deepening their design, synthesis and applications
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