Imprinted Polymer Hydrogels for the Separation of Viruses

The goal of this research is to elucidate the mechanism of virus recognition in molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) using already utilized techniques. Our approach employs a more flexible non-covalent imprinting method which starts from a readily available polymer and utilizes an aqueous environment for both MIP synthesis and testing. Virus MIPs against tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) were synthesized. The synthesis procedure was optimized to obtain better binding characteristics to the targeted virus. Efforts were made to avoid polymer-template aggregation in the MIP pre-polymerization mixture, and determine a proper wash solution by the ability to remove the templated virus from the cross-linked polymer.