Fluorescent competitive flow-through assay for chloramphenicol using molecularly imprinted polymers

It is a fact that molecular imprinting techniques have reached tremendous i mportance in the research of new artificial recognition systems. These meth ods resemble the mechanism of natural recognition, generally based on non-c ovalent interactions, but improving their stability by means of a simple an d inexpensive technique, Molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs) are easily ob tained by copolymerisation of suitable functional monomers and crosslinkers in the presence of the print molecule. Removal of the template leaves a po lymer that selectively recognises it. In this work, different imprinted pol ymers for chloramphenicol (CAP) obtained using different monomers and polym erisation conditions were tested in a HPLC system, in order to obtain a hig hly selective material for CAP. The optimised MIP was then used as recognit ion phase in a fluorescent competitive flow assay to determine chlorampheni col. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.