Synthesis of prednisolone molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles by precipitation polymerization

Abstract

The prednisolone molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles (prednisolone‐MIPs) were prepared via precipitation polymerization. The synthetic conditions were performed by optimizing of functional monomers (acrylamide and methacrylic acid) and crosslinkers (ethylene glycol dimethacrylate and pentaerythritol triacrylate) with defined the synthetic ratio of template molecule:functional monomer:crosslinker as 1:7:30. The acquired MIPs were studied for their binding quantitation by kinetic adsorption analysis. Two of four synthetic conditions reached an equilibrium binding capacity at 960 minutes. In addition, the equilibrium adsorption, kinetic models, adsorption isotherms, and molecular selectivity were also evaluated in this study. The pseudo‐second order was the best fitted kinetic model with good agreement on Langmuir isotherm of both optimum conditions. The molecular recognition of prednisolone‐MIPs was further carried out to demonstrate the selectivity performance and found that prednisolone‐MIPs had a good recognition to target prednisolone rather than structural analogue.