Synthesis of magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers for selective release and take up of thiopental barbiturate

Molecular imprinting is known as a technique for creation oftailor-made binding sites with memory of the shape, size andfunctional groups of the template molecules. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) can be synthesized by copolymerization of the functionalmonomers and cross-linkers in the presence of template molecules. After removal of the template molecules, recognitioncavities complementary to the template molecule in shape,size and chemical functionality were formed in the highlycross-linked polymer matrix, which can selectively rebindthe template molecules from a mixture of closely related compounds, as shown below[1] Surface imprintingapproach has advantages in comparision with the traditional MIPs (e.g. complete template removal, high bindingcapacity, fast kinetics and mass transfer). In this work, surface imprinting was formed on magnetic nanoparticles (MNPS) so that a core shell structure was achieved (Core: MNPs, Shell: MIP network). Thanks to this hybrid system, not only the advantages of the surface imprinting approach, but also the desired properties of MNPs can be exploited [2].Barbiturates, belong to anticonvulsant drugs and having sedative and hypnotic properties, are used as template molecules.Furthermore, they are frequent drugs of abuse and their abuse is now widespread [3]. MNPs (Fe3O4) was synthesized by coprecipitationusing FeCl2.4H2O and FeCl3.6H2O as raw materials. Then theMNPs modified and functionlized with with a functional silica layer through sol-gel method. Then, the prepared functional MNPs, thiopental (as template and an anesthesia drug), methacrylic acid (as a functional monomer), ethyleneglycoldimethacrylate (EGDMA) as cross-linker and finally AIBN were copolymerized.The structure, morphology, release and rebind properties of the resultant MIPs have been completely characterized..