Towards the development of molecularly imprinted artificial receptors for the screening of estrogenic chemicals.

Molecularly imprinted polymers are prepared using various steroid compounds as the templates. The imprinted polymers can selectively re-bind the original print molecules, which leads to versatile potential applications. The feasibility of using these artificial receptors to replace their biological counterparts for preliminary screening of a chemical library is demonstrated. A steroid library composed of 22 closely related compounds is screened with an estrogen specific polymer. The print molecule is identified with accuracy and structural similarities of other members are correlated with normalized retention indices. Molecularly imprinted artificial receptors are envisioned as being useful for screening purposes in drug discovery or for identifying endocrine-disrupting chemicals.