Original article: SYNTHESIS AND COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION OF MOLECULARLY IMPRINTED NANOSPHERES FOR SELECTIVE RECOGNITION OF ALPHA-TOCOPHEROL SUCCINATE

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are macromolecular matrices that can mimic the functional properties of antibodies, receptors and enzymes while possessing higher durability. As such, these polymers are interesting materials for applications in biomimetic sensor, drug synthesis, drug delivery and separation. In this study, we prepared MIPs and molecularly im-printed nanospheres (MINs) as receptors with specific recognition properties toward tocoph-erol succinate (TPS) in comparison to tocopherol (TP) and tocopherol nicotinate (TPN). MIPs were synthesized using methacrylic acid (MAA) as functional monomer, ethylene glycol di-methacrylate (EGDMA) as crosslinking agent and dichloromethane or acetronitrile as poro-genic solvent under thermal-induced polymerization condition. Results indicated that imprint-ed polymers of TPS-MIP, TP-MIP and TPN-MIP all bound specifically to their template mol-ecules at 2 folds greater than the non-imprinted polymers. The calculated binding capacity of all MIP was approximately 2 mg per gram of polymer when using the optimal rebinding sol-vent EtOH:H2O (3:2, v/v). Furthermore, the MINs toward TPS and TP were prepared by pre-cipitation polymerization that yielded particles that are 200-400 nm in size. The binding ca-