Molecularly imprinted polymer for the selective extraction of luteolin from Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat.

In this work, luteolin-imprinted polymers were prepared by noncovalent precipitation polymerization for the first time. Their structural features and morphologies were analyzed by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The adsorption experiments revealed that the luteolin-imprinted polymers presented high selective recognition property to luteolin. The selectivity experiment showed that the adsorption capacity and selectivity of polymers to luteolin was higher than that of three structural analogs, including quercetin, isorhamnetin, and ombuin. Furthermore, an efficient method based on luteolin-imprinted polymers coupled with solid-phase extraction was developed for the pretreatment of luteolin from Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat. The results demonstrated that the luteolin-imprinted polymers coupled with solid phase extraction method was proven to be a potentially competitive technique for the separation and enrichment of luteolin in complex samples such as Chinese patent medicines and biological samples.