Scaffold imprinting sites

II. MOLECULAR DESIGN AND CREATION OF SCAFFOLD IMPRINTING SITES... 

Figure 6 The template theophylline (T) is allowed to interact with the functional monomer methacrylic acid (M) to form a self-assembly. The monomers will interact with theophylline and will form a self-assembly complex mainly based on hydrogen bonding. This self-assembly and the positions of the functional monomers are then frozen and held in place by copolymerization with cross-linker ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (L). This leads to a rigid polymer scaffold that retains the spatial conformation and thus the specific binding cavity of the original template. After extraction of the template, a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) is obtained and the imprinted cavity is able to specifically rebind the template and other, even similar structures are excluded from the binding site cavity.

A scaffolding monomer having multi-interaction sites for the target molecule is a general approach that can utilize the principles of both covalent and noncovalent imprinting. Many cases have been described using scaffold multi-mers, which interact with the template via multiple binding interactions and subsequently cross-linked... 

As outlined in Section 2 the optimization of the imprinting scaffold is of cmcial importance for improving the performance of MIPS with respect to binding site homogeneity, capacity, mass transfer, and accessibility. Moreover, the development of MlPs in different formats is key to unlocking previously unexplored applications. 

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