(150f) Molecularly Imprinted Polymeric Nanoparticles for Treating Viral Infections - A Synthetic Antibody Approach

Molecular imprinting is an effective method that has been used commercially for more than a decade in chemical purification, analysis and sensor technologies. The working principle behind this technique is the creation of recognition sites in polymers through the specific 3-dimensional arrangements of monomers around the template molecules to be imprinted. This makes the imprint highly specific in recognizing the template molecule, and this behaviour is a chemical analog of biological antibodies.

In this research, our goal is to create molecular imprints of viruses on the surfaces of polymeric nanoparticles to "capture" and remove any active, disease-causing viruses. Virus transmitted diseases such as chikungunya, dengue and hepatitis pose significant social and economic problems throughout the world every year. Hence, the removal of viruses could be the ultimate approach for a vast range of virally transmitted diseases. Typical virus removal methods include ultrafine filtration or high speed centrifugation which is usually slow and expensive. Therefore, virus specific molecularly imprinted polymers may be an attractive and cheaper alternative to existing techniques involving the design of the “viral sponge” which would specifically and selectively remove or kill pathogenic virus from blood or sera.

We prepared surface imprinted polymers for viruses and tested its capability of specifically adsorbing viruses and preventing viral infections under in vitro conditions. For this proof of concept study, a simple bacteriophage was used as the model virus template. Virus imprinted (vMIPs) and Non-imprinted polymeric nanoparticles sized about 40nm were synthesized using miniemulsion polymerization. Methyl methacrylate (MMA) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) were employed as the functional and cross-linker monomers, respectively. The imprinted polymers exhibited higher preferential binding to template virus as compared to controls.  In vitro experiments in a model host-virus system proved that our vMIPs was able to partially inhibit phage infection in E.coli. This research is the first of its kind to demonstrate the usage of molecularly imprinted polymers to catch viruses in the presence of its host cells.