Timothy D. Rembold, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, David R. Kryscio, Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Kentucky, 177 F. Paul Anderson Tower, Lexington, KY 40506, and J. Zach Hilt, University of Kentucky, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Lexington, KY 40506.
For control over loading and delivery of a desired pharmaceutical compound, moiety imprinted polymers (MoIPs) are a novel alternative to imprinting for entire drugs. For this approach, a moiety of the drug is used as the template instead of the entire drug. Molecularly imprinted polymers have been shown to have a higher affinity for a target molecule as a result of the recognition sites. This high affinity can be used to increase loading and to control release of a drug. Here, MoIPs have been shown to have a higher affinity for both the moiety (template) and the entire drug compound. Specifically, the synthesis and characterization of moiety (D-glucose) imprinted polymers for application in drug delivery were studied. The swelling, loading, and release of a model drug (Phenyl-ß-D-glucopyranoside) were analyzed. The potential of MoIPs to increase affinity for a model drug over a nonimprinted polymer was demonstrated.