“Surface imprinted beads for the recognition of human serum albumin”

The synthesis of poly-aminophenylboronic acid (ABPA) imprinted beads for the recognition of the protein human serum albumin (HSA) is here reported. In order to create homogeneous recognition sites the covalent immobilisation of the template HSA was exploited. Imprinted beads resulted selective for HAS. The indirect imprinting factor (IF) calculated from supernatant was of 1.6 and the direct IF, evaluated from the protein recovered from the beads, was 1.9. The binding capacity was 1.4 mg/g, comparable to commercially available affinity materials. The specificity of the HSA recognition was evaluated with competitive experiments, indicating a molar ratio 4.5/1 of competitor was necessary to displace half of the bound HSA. The recognition and binding of the imprinted beads was tested also with a complex sample, the human serum sample, showing a targeted removal of HSA, without a loss of the other protein components. The easy preparation protocol of derivatised beads and a good protein recognition make the approach attractive to resolve analytical and bio-analytical problems in the field of biotechnology. 3Introductio