Syntheses of steroid-based molecularly imprinted polymers and their molecular recognition study with spectrometric detection

Recognition of five steroid compounds, beta-estradiol, ethynylestradiol, estradiolbenzoate, testosterone and methyltestosterone were studied using a synthesized molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP). When beta-estradiol was used as the template molecule, the polymer was synthesized with methacrylic acid (MAA) as the functional monomer and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as the cross linking agent through non-covalent interactions. It is found that the kind of porogen solvent and the polymerization conditions greatly affected the binding ability of a MIP to a certain molecule. Releasing of the template was performed by continuous extraction with methanol containing 10% acetic acid in a Soxhlet extractor. Our results indicated that such carefully synthesized MIP showed specific affinity toward beta-estradiol in the adsorption process.