Molecularly imprinted polymers for capturing and sensing proteins: Current progress and future implications

Molecular recognition plays an important role in the numerous living systems. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are tailor-made recognition particles that can mimic biological receptors and capable of sensitively and selectively recognize specific target molecules. In recent years, application of nanoparticles as sorbent has gained the significant attention in bioanalysis field. Molecular imprinting has performed effectively for low-molecular weight compounds (<1500 Da) and the number of reports on the macromolecules imprinting (>1500 Da) is increasing considerably during the recent years. Proteins are vital markers of some diseases and protein imprinting is one of the applicable tools to generate tailor-made biomimetic receptors with antibody-like specific recognition sites that compared with small-molecular imprinting, due to the variety of reasons such as the large size, structural and chemical complexity, and environmentally instability, relatively little advancement has been done in this field. In this review, the main topics of concern are protein-imprinting approaches, rational designs of protein-MIPs, metrics for successful proteins imprinting, and protein biomarkers. Additionally, we focus on gathering, summarizing, and critically evaluating the reports, which have recently been employed MIP based synthetic nanoparticles as sorbent for sensing and separating proteins. Also, we offer suggestions for future successful attainment in the field of protein-imprinted polymers.