Fighting Antibiotic‐Resistant Bacteria: Promising Strategies Orchestrated by Molecularly Imprinted Polymers

Abstract

Infections caused by antibiotic‐resistant bacteria are difficult and sometimes impossible to treat, making them one of the major public health problems of our time. We highlight how one unique material, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), can orchestrate several strategies to fight this serious societal issue. MIPs are tailor‐made biomimetic supramolecular receptors that recognize and bind target molecules with high affinity and selectivity, comparable to those of antibodies. While research on MIPs for combatting cancer has flourished, comprehensive work on their involvement in combatting resistant superbugs has been rather scarce. This review aims at filling this gap. We will describe the causes of bacterial resistance and at which level MIPs can deploy their weapons. MIPs’ targets can be biofilm constituents, quorum sensing messengers, bacterial surface proteins and antibiotic‐deactivating enzymes, among others. We will conclude with the current challenges and future developments in this field.

Reusable and universal impedimetric sensing platform for the rapid and sensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria based on bacteria-imprinted polythiophene film

“…31 However, we have to acknowledge that the imprinting of whole bacterial cells is still very challenging due to their large size and complex chemical composition, leading to increased difficulty in the complete removal of the template, and the generation of imprinted sites with good accessibility and recognition capability. 32…”

“…31 However, we have to acknowledge that the imprinting of whole bacterial cells is still very challenging due to their large size and complex chemical composition, leading to increased difficulty in the complete removal of the template, and the generation of imprinted sites with good accessibility and recognition capability. 32 To overcome the difficulties mentioned above, various surface imprinting strategies such as stamping/microcontact, 33 Pickering emulsion polymerization, 34 colloidal imprinting, 35,36 and electro-polymerization 37 have been proposed. However, most of these are cumbersome, time-consuming, and environmentally unfriendly, using large amounts of toxic reagents such as cross-linkers, initiators, and organic solvents.…”

Biological sample-compatible Au nanoparticle-containing fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymer microspheres by combining RAFT polymerization and Au–thiol chemistry

“…Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are synthetic receptors with tailor-made molecular recognition sites. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] They have many prominent characteristics such as high molecular recognition ability, excellent physiochemical stability, easy preparation, and low cost, which make them highly promising in a wide range of applications such as separation and purification, 2,3,5-7 enzymelike catalysis, 4 chemosensing, 1,7,8 and various biomedical areas. [9][10][11][12] Among them, MIP-based fluorescent chemosensors have garnered great interest in the bioanalytical and biomedical fields because of the combined advantages of MIPs and fluorescence analyses (i.e., high sensitivity, simple instruments, and easy implementation).…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] They have many prominent characteristics such as high molecular recognition ability, excellent physiochemical stability, easy preparation, and low cost, which make them highly promising in a wide range of applications such as separation and purification, 2,3,5-7 enzymelike catalysis, 4 chemosensing, 1,7,8 and various biomedical areas. [9][10][11][12] Among them, MIP-based fluorescent chemosensors have garnered great interest in the bioanalytical and biomedical fields because of the combined advantages of MIPs and fluorescence analyses (i.e., high sensitivity, simple instruments, and easy implementation). [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] They are typically fabricated by labelling MIPs with various fluorescent species, where the MIPs function as the recognition elements to selectively recognize the target analytes and the fluorescent species quantitatively transform such recognition processes into the fluorescent signals.…”

Enhancement of inhibition rate of antibiotic against bacteria by molecularly imprinted nanoparticles targeting alarmone nucleotides as antibiotic adjuvants

“…19 MIP beads with recognition sites complementary to the bacteria surface groups have also been produced by using bacteria as the template. 20 A recent review by K. Haupt theoretically demonstrated the feasibility of MIPs for combating resistant bacteria; 21 however, research on MIPs as antibiotic adjuvants has never been exploited. Here, MIP-NPs capable of recognizing pGpp, ppGpp, and pppGpp were produced by using guanosine-5 0 -diphosphate (ppG) as the dummy template, which is a strategy to produce MIPs with recognition sites to a group of structural analogues.…”