Bioinspired intelligent molecularly imprinted polymers for chemosensing: A mini review

Receptors found in natural living systems specifically recognize target biomolecules. If applied to biosensing, they offer the much desired high selectivity. However, their instability under measurement conditions and low durability prompted researchers toward devising different artificial receptor alternatives. For instance, an antibody is successfully mimicked by a corresponding molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP), sometimes called a plastic antibody. Nowadays, MIPs are widely used as recognition units in chemical sensors. The present mini review critically surveys selected recent representative examples of MIPs, and functionalized monomers used to devise these MIPs for the determination of biologically important target analytes by mimicking their natural recognition routes.