Antibody mimics, MIPs

Similarly to their natural counterparts (enzymes, antibodies, and hormone receptors), MIPs have found numerous applications in various areas. They have been used as antibody mimics in immunoassays and sensors and biochips as affinity separation materials and for chemical and bioanalysis, for directed synthesis and enzyme-like catalysis, and for biomedical applications. Concerning their commercialization, there has been great progress during the past decade, in particular in the... 

Shea and colleagues [109-111] added an exciting contribution to this field They created molecular imprints for the peptide melittin, the main component of bee venom, in polymer nanoparticles, resulting in artificial antibody mimics that can be used for the in vivo capture and neutralization of melittin. Melittin is a peptide comprising 26 amino acids which is toxic because of its cytolytic activity. Shea and colleagues strategy was to synthesize cross-linked, acrylamide-based MIP nanoparticles by a process based on precipitation polymerization using a small amount of surfactant. To maximize the specificity and the affinity for melittin, a number of hydrophilic monomers were screened for complementarity with the template. The imprinted nanoparticles were able to bind selectively the peptide with an apparent dissociation constant of Ax>app > 1 nM [109]. 

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have been used in many different applications, such as affinity separation matrices [6, 7], antibody mimics in immunoassays [8-11], recognition elements in biosensors [12-16], selective... 

Ansell RA (2005) Applications of MIPs as antibody mimics in immunoassays. In Yan M, Ramstrom O (eds) Molecularly imprinted polymers science and technology. Marcel Dekker, New York... 

USE OF MOLECULARLY IMPRINTED POLYMERS (MIPs) AS ANTIBODY MIMICS... 

Finally, and in which refers to the recognition element, it can be taken into account that there are some approaches that use synthetic antibodies that mimic the natural ones. This is the case of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), where the imprinting effect is achieved... 

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