DEVELOPMENT OF MIP SENSORS FOR ANTIBIOTICS

Water pollution is a global concern due to its potential threat to public health. Antibiotics constitute a major class of pharmaceutical pollutants usually found in water. Their increasing usage in human and veterinary medicines coupled with the possibility of passing through sewage treatment plants makes their regular occurrence in water bodies of no surprise¹. Environmental persistence and toxicity of antibiotics may affect biological functions and increase the development of virulent strains of pathogenic bacteria hence, the need for monitoring these compounds through sensitive analytical detection techniques.

Molecular imprinting presents a state-of-the-art technique to prepare robust materials with antibody-like functionality that bind and discriminate between molecules². However, despite the abundant publications available on MIP-based pollutant detection, literature highlighting antibiotic-MIPs on label-free platforms are yet to gain the enormous and urgent research attention it deserves³. Consequently, a core aim of our research is to synthesize and characterize label-free MIP sensors for antibiotics utilizing surface acoustic wave (SAW), surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) as sensor transducers, thereby making a huge contribution to the development of sensitive analytical techniques for quick detection of antibiotics in water.

fig. 1

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Tallinn University of Technology in the frame of the Development project (grant SS425)

References

[1] Tong, L., Huang, S., Wang, Y., Liu, H., Li, M. (2014) Occurrence of antibiotics in the aquatic environment of Jianghan Plain, central China. Science of the Total Environment 497: 180-187.

[2] Mosbach, K. (1994) Molecular imprinting. Trends in biochemical sciences 19: 9-14.

[3] Ayankojo, A. G., Tretjakov, A., Reut, J., Boroznjak, R., Öpik, A., Rappich, J., Furchner, A., Hinrichs, K., Syritski, V. (2016) Molecularly imprinted polymer integrated with a surface acoustic wave technique for detection of sulfamethizole. Analytical chemistry 88: 1476-1484.