A durable antifouling protein molecularly imprinted gel interface for human serum albumin detection and antibacterial application

Abstract In biomedical field, antifouling and antibacterial materials are recognized as very valuable biomaterials due to their effective elimination/decrease of biofouling and inhibition of bacterial reproduction to further improve selectivity and sensitivity, and keep function of artificial interfaces used in in vitro and in vivo biological environments. Gels, possessing three-dimensional polymer networks, are attracting increasing interests to explore their antifouling and antibacterial abilities. As a class of artificial synthetic recognition probes, protein molecularly imprinted polymers, are also playing a key part in enhancing selectivity and accuracy owing to their prominent specificity towards targets that depended on the three-dimensional cavities in polymers, which are absolutely complementary in spatial structure and functionality with the imprinted targets. Herein, we reported an antifouling and antibacterial protein molecularly imprinted gel interface that integrated the antifouling and antibacterial properties of gel and protein molecularly imprinted polymers just right. The developed biosensing interface exhibited high capabilities in preventing nonspecific protein adsorption and undesired cell adhesion, and achieved a highly sensitive and selective analysis of target protein of human serum albumin (HSA) even in real complex biological media. HSA is playing the crucial role for human health, particularly in the case of disease occurrence. The as-synthesized protein molecularly imprinted gel surface also revealed excellent antibacterial efficacy against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, which was successfully applied in in vivo wound disinfection and healing. The high specificity and sensitivity, excellent antifouling and antibacterial capabilities of such gel interface indicated the promising feasibility of this design strategy that combines highly specific recognition probes and antifouling biomaterials for the assembly of biomedical appliance to be used or implanted in real in vitro and in vivo biological systems.