Preparation of molecularly imprinted polymer sorbents for the adsorption of paclitaxel

Paclitaxel (formerly called Taxol), an important anticancer drug, is a natural occurring diterpene alkaloid originally is isolated from the bark of Taxus brevifolia [1]. The currentavailable processes for the extraction of Paclitaxel are suffering from high consumption of organic solvents andtherefor in total are not cost effective [2]. Molecular imprinting as an emerging technology involves the arrangement of functional monomers around templatemolecules in a porogenic solvent and subsequent copolymerization of the mixture. After the removal of the template, the specific cavities, which are complementary inshape, size and chemical functionality to the template, are left within the polymer matrix. These specific cavities canselectively rebind target (i.e. the template, here Paclitaxel)molecule [3,4]. Therefore, in the present work, for the first time selective molecularly imprinted polymer sorbents for theenrichment of paclitaxel were synthesized by molecular imprinting technique. The molecularly imprinted polymers(MIPs) were evaluated through the equilibrium binding assay. The results indicated that the imprinted polymers exhibited good selectivity and specificity toward paclitaxel.