Citation:
Elena V. Piletska, Maria Romero-Guerra, Iva Chianella, Kal Karim, Anthony P.F.
Turner, Sergey A. Piletsky, Towards the development of multisensor for drugs of
abuse based on molecular imprinted polymers, Analytica Chimica Acta. Vol. 542,
Issue 1, Papers presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Molecularly
Imprinted Polymers, 22 June 2005, p. 111-117.
Abstract:
The synthetic receptors for cocaine, deoxyephedrine, methadone and morphine were
computationally designed and produced using molecular imprinting. The structure
and energy of the molecular complexes were analysed by computational techniques.
The possible structures of the binding sites in the synthetic receptors have
been compared with those of corresponding natural receptors. The composition of
imprinted polymers was optimised to allow adequate performance under the same
experimental conditions. All selected molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs)
demonstrated stronger affinity in comparison with corresponding blank polymers
resulting in imprinted factors (I) equal to 1.2 (cocaine), 2.5 (deoxyephedrine),
3.5 (methadone) and 3 (morphine) which suggested that the specific binding site
for each molecule was successfully created. The polymers studied possessed good
selectivity and affinity towards their templates and could be recommended for
the integration with sensor devices. From a practical point of view, especially
for multisensor requirements, the synthetic receptors based on imprinted
polymers could be superior to natural receptors due to their stability,
robustness and compatibility with automation processes required for sensor
fabrication.
