Abstract:
Immunohistochemistry using antibodies plays a pivotal role in the diagnosis of various solid
cancers and haematological malignancies such as leukaemias, lymphomas and myelomas.
However, antibodies have a number of disadvantages including its high cost, requirement for
refrigeration for transport and storage and its limited shelf life. Hence, the search for a
sensitive and specific diagnostic platform that is robust and reproducible and one that utilises
a capture ligand which is easy and cheap to manufacture and is stable at room temperature
with a long shelf life. Such diagnostic platform would be particularly useful in developing
countries, where facilities for storage and transportation at sub-zero temperatures are limited.
Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs), one of the rapidly advancing technologies for
nanodiagnostics, may offer such a solution in cancer diagnostics.
This exploratory study was undertaken to investigate whether MIP nanoparticles synthesised
using the solid-phase approach and epitope imprinting method have potential to replace
antibodies in cancer diagnosis. The common leucocyte antigen or CD45 protein which is
universally expressed on haemopoietic cells was chosen as the candidate for molecular
imprinting because the expression of this antigen can differentiate blood cancers from other
neoplasia. In order to make the process cost-effective, a custom-made peptide template with
the amino acid sequence that is widely used for anti-CD45 antibody production was used for
imprinting. A modification to the amino acid sequence of the template was made by adding
the amino acid cysteine which has a thiol group, to the carboxyl end of the CD45 template
peptide and anchored to silica nanoparticles to improve the homogeneity of the imprinted
polymers. Synthesis of MIPs was carried out using two different compositions of functional
monomers, one with a 'standard' mix of monomers and the other one containing a fluorinated
monomer. The characterisation of the synthesised nanoMIPs and the binding of the target
protein to the MIPs were studied using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and tunable resistive
pulse sensing (TRPS).
The results of this study prove that the solid-phase synthesis using a custom made
polypeptide as the template (segment imprinting) is a logical approach. One important
technical refinement is the immobilisation of the template protein to the silica beads in a
single orientation via the amino acid cysteine. This modification resulted in the production of
more uniform nanoMIPs with low polydispersity. Another significant observation of this study
is that the use of fluorinated monomer in combination with the 'standard functional
monomers' for the MIP synthesis has improved the quality of the nanoMIPs produced.
Furthermore, this study has successfully explored, for the first time, the usefulness and
applicability of the technique of tunable resistive pulse sensing (TRPS) for the
characterisation of nanoMIPs. The preliminary results obtained in this study indicates that this
technique may be superior to dynamic light scattering (DLS) for not only measuring the size
and size distribution of the particles but also to study MIP-target interactions. The TRPS
analysis of the changes in the zeta potential of the nanoMIPs has shown that the CD45
epitope imprinted nanoMIPs bind to the CD45 protein.