The Evolution of Molecular Recognition: From Antibodies to Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) as Artificial Counterpart.
J Funct Biomater 2022;
13:jfb13010012. [PMID:
35225975 PMCID:
PMC8883926 DOI:
10.3390/jfb13010012]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2021] [Revised: 01/15/2022] [Accepted: 01/26/2022] [Indexed: 02/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Molecular recognition is a useful property shared by various molecules, such as antibodies, aptamers and molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). It allows these molecules to be potentially involved in many applications including biological and pharmaceutical research, diagnostics, theranostics, therapy and drug delivery. Antibodies, naturally produced by plasma cells, have been exploited for this purpose, but they present noticeable drawbacks, above all production cost and time. Therefore, several research studies for similar applications have been carried out about MIPs and the main studies are reported in this review. MIPs, indeed, are more versatile and cost-effective than conventional antibodies, but the lack of toxicity studies and their scarce use for practical applications, make it that further investigations on this kind of molecules need to be conducted.
Collapse