Some studies of the chromatographic properties of gels (‘Artificial antibodies/receptors’) for selective adsorption of proteins

Although conventional imprinting involving the use of charged functional monomers has been used by many authors for selective adsorption of small molecules, it has not been very successful with high-molecular-weight substances, for example proteins (“...macromolecules, such as proteins are difficult to apply as templates...”; H. S. Andersson, Doctoral Thesis, Trycki Högskolan Kalmar, 1999, p. 8.). Four years ago we therefore introduced an alternative method based on the polymerization ofnon-charged monomers (acrylamide andN,N′-methylenebisacrylamide) in the presence of the protein of interest. The selectivity of the gels for proteins was high (for instance, myoglobin from horse was adsorbed by a column designed to be selective for this protein, whereas, myoglobin from whale was not adsorbed) and they can therefore be regarded as ‘artificial antibodies’ (or ‘artificial receptors’).