Development of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) Nano Particles for the Selective Determination of Carbamazepine in Human Serum and Plasma

A new, simple, rapid, and sensitive solid-phase extraction with molecularly imprinted polymer (SPE-MIP) for determination of Carbamazepine in biological samples was developed. These nano particle polymers were synthesized via a non-covalent molecular imprinting approach through precipitation polymerization method using methacrylic acid (MAA) as a functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker agent, carbamazepine as a target template molecule and azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as an initiator. The optimal conditions for SPE consisted of conditioning the cartridge using a pH=3.0 water, loading 5.0 ml of the sample under basic aqueous conditions, clean-up using 2×2ml acetonitrile and elution with 3.0 ml methanol. After optimization of SPE procedure, an aliquot of extracted template was injected to the ACE, 5μm 250×4.6 mm analytical column with the mobile phase as the same as elution solvent. This method was used for extraction of carbamazepine from an anticonvulsant aqueous solution and the results revealed an extraction recovery of more than 90%. HPLC chromatograms show an efficient clean up, which supports the potential of MISPE for clean-up of trace amounts of carbamazepine from the drug formulation.