Commercialization potential of molecularly imprinted polymers in biosensing applications

Abstract Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) have become a cutting-edge technology in biosensing applications, including food safety, environmental monitoring, and healthcare because of their distinctive capacity to selectively recognize target molecules with great specificity and sensitivity. Although the rise of molecular imprinting technology (MIT) has resulted in obtaining more than 1000 patents, most of the studies are limited to academic settings due to the number of important obstacles and such problems with scalability, reproducibility, and regulatory barriers. This review will first introduce the methods for integrating MIPs into biosensor surfaces, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, and then address some of the obstacles and challenges of these methods for hindering MIPs’ commercialization. Following that, revelant MIP-based sensor studies, including healthcare monitoring, food safety, and clinical applications are presented to compare the recognition performances of MIPs to the traditional methods, and illustrate their commercialization potentials. Finally, we present a thorough analysis of the potential of MIPs to revolutionize the biosensing field and meet the increasing need for rapid, accurate, and affordable detection techniques by addressing some obtacles and bottlenecks and determining strategical commercialization pathways.