A Molecularly Imprinted Polymer for the Selective Solid-Phase Extraction of Ibuprofen from Urine Samples

A molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was synthesized and evaluated to selectively extract ibuprofen, a non- steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), from human urine. The synthesis of the MIP was performed in dimethylformamide with acrylamide as functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as the cross linker and ibuprofen template as the target drug. The performance of the synthesized MIP as solid phase extraction (SPE) packing to recognize and bind ibuprofen was evaluated against other structurally related NSAIDs such as naproxen and ketoprofen. Using a mixture of acetonitrile-water (1/9 v/v) as a solvent for ibuprofen the binding recovery at approximately 90% was obtained for developed MIP in optimized conditions. Batch rebinding capacity of ibuprofen was determined from the derived Freundlich isotherm and was found to be 1.45 � mol g -1 . Furthermore, a higher selectivity of developed MIP for ibuprofen over structurally related analogues was observed. The synthesized MIP has enabled the direct percolation of humane urine and the easy elimination of endogenous compounds from it with simple aqueous washing of the MIP-SPE packing. HPLC analysis has confirmed the high extraction recovery (ca. 85 %) of ibuprofen from such urine samples with use of proposed MIP-SPE system.