Molecularly imprinted macroporous monolithic materials for protein recognition

Synthetic materials that can specifically recognize proteins will find wide application in many fields. In this report, bovine serum albumin was chosen as the template protein. Acrylamide and N,N′-methylenebisacrylamide were employed as the functional and cross-linker monomers, respectively. Molecularly imprinted macroporous monolithic materials that can preferentially bind the template protein in an aqueous environment were prepared by combination of molecular imprinting technique and freezing/thawing preparation method. The resulted imprinted macroporous monolithic columns were evaluated by utilizing as stationary phase in high performance liquid chromatography and solid-phase extraction materials. The experimental results indicated that the imprinted macroporous monolithic column exhibited good recognition for template protein, as compared with the control protein (hemoglobin), whereas the non-imprinted polymer (prepared under the same conditions except without addition template protein) had no selective properties.