Biomolecule imprinting: Developments in mimicking dynamic natural recognition systems

Abstract The principle of molecular imprinting has repeatedly been proven a successful and effective means of creating sites of specific recognition within polymers. After almost three decades of development, we finally have some evidence of large molecule imprinting. In this review, the authors aim to bring the molecular imprinting community up-to-date. We describe here some of the new and innovative work that endeavours to take molecular imprinting away from its chromatographic, synthetic past and make use of this technique in new, exciting and developing fields, such as drug delivery, biotechnology, biosensors, protein/drug recognition and in the development of novel materials. The main discussion analyses a variety of different two-dimensional and three-dimensional approaches recently developed for the recognition of larger molecules or biomolecules, such as proteins, viruses and cells, and how the traditional imprinting methods have been adapted to suit the mass transfer requirements of these biological templates. We also review a relatively new technique that has emerged from the imprinting approach, which aims to develop novel materials from the imprints of biological materials.