Water-compatible molecularly imprinted polymers for selective solid phase extraction of dencichine from the aqueous extract of Panax notoginseng

• Multi-templates molecularly imprinted polymers for dencichine were firstly proposed.
• The MIPs displayed excellent hydrophilicity.
• The MIPs had high affinity and selectivity to dencichine.
• Application of the optimized protocol for the extraction of dencichine from the aqueous extract of Panax notoginseng.

Specific molecularly imprinted polymers for dencichine were developed for the first time in this study by the bulk polymerization using phenylpyruvic acid and dl-tyrosine as multi-templates. The photographs confirmed that molecularly imprinted polymers prepared using N,N′-methylene diacrylamide as cross-linker and glycol dimethyl ether as porogen displayed excellent hydrophilicity. Selectivity, adsorption isotherm and adsorption kinetics were investigated. The sample loading-washing-eluting solvent was optimized to evaluate the property of molecularly imprinted solid phase extract. Compared with LC/WCX-SPE, water-compatible molecularly imprinted solid phase extraction displayed more excellent specific adsorption performance. The extracted dencichine from Panax notoginseng with the purity of 98.5% and the average recovery of 85.6% (n = 3) was obtained.