Evaluation of the origins of the selectivity of polymers imprinted with a HIV protease inhibitor using infrared spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography.

This work investigates the origins of enantioselectivity of polymers imprinted with the HIV protease inhibitor, Indinavir. For the preparation of imprints of the drug, the critical interactions between the functional monomer, methacrylic acid, and Indinavir were characterized by infrared (IR) spectroscopy to explore the optimum functional monomer concentration for the polymerization. It was shown that a polymer with high selectivity and minimum non-selective binding for Indinavir was obtained when prepared with enough functional monomer to hydrogen bond with all of the functional groups of the drug without using an excess of monomer. This observation is explained in terms of a balance that is achieved in the monomer-template equilibrium during the polymerization that yields a polymer with highly selective sites and minimal non-selective sites. This paper further demonstrates that IR spectroscopy can be a valuable tool in the design and syntheses of molecular imprinted polymers.