Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) can often bind target molecules with high selectivity and specificity. When used as MIPs, conductive polymers may have unique binding capabilities; they often contain aromatic rings, which have a great tendency to undergo covalent and hydrogen bonding interactions with similarly structured target (or template) molecules. In this work, an electrochemical method was used to optimize the synthetic self-assembly of poly(aniline-co-metanilic acid) and testosterone, forming testosterone-imprinted polymers (TIPs) on sensing electrodes. The linear sensing range for testosterone ranged from 0.1 to 100 pg/mL, and the limit of detection was as low as ~pM. Random urine samples were collected and diluted 1000 fold to measure testosterone concentration using the above TIP sensors in comparison with a commercial ARCHITECT ci 8200 system. The testosterone concentrations in the tested samples were in the range of 0.33± 0.09 to 9.13±1.33 ng/mL. The mean accuracy of the TIP-coated sensors was 90.3 ±7.0 %.

Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) is a biomarker on the surface of cells that has a role in promoting self-tolerance by suppressing the inflammatory activity of T cells. In this work, one peptide of PD-1 was used as the template in molecular imprinting. The magnetic peptide-imprinted poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) composite nanoparticles (MPIP NPs) were characterized by dynamic light scattering (DLS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) analysis. Natural killer-92 (NK-92) cells were added to these composite nanoparticles and then incubated with human hepatoma (HepG2) cells. The viability and apoptosis pathway of HepG2 were then studied using cell counting kit-8 (CCK8) and the quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), respectively. These nanoparticles were found significantly enhance the activity of natural killer cells toward HepG2 cells by increasing expression of NK-kB, caspase 8 and especially caspase 3.