Molecularly imprinted polymers, MIPs, are best described as synthetic analogues to the natural, biological antibody–antigen systems. As such, they operate by a “lock and key” mechanism to selectively bind the molecule with which they were templated during production.
Hydrogel-based molecularly imprinted polymers (HydroMIPs) have predominately been based on cross-linked polyacrylamide. Such polymer networks have shown high selectivity for template proteins when compared with a nonimprinted control polymer (NIP).