Tailor-made molecular imprints for biological event intervention.

The root cause of metabolic chronic syndrome, malignant tumors, and viral/bacterial infections is unconventional biomolecular-recognition-mediated cascade reactions, or the overexpression or suppression of these reactions. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are usually obtained by copolymerization of functional and crosslinking monomers in the presence of template molecules. Upon removing the template molecules, the cavities left in the polymer can specifically bind to the targets, which underlies their intervention activities. MIPs can participate in various biological processes without negative interference, such as targeted drug delivery, blocking pathogenic signaling pathways and constructing functional signal connections, thereby controlling cell fate by regulating their proliferation, migration and apoptosis fate behaviors. Molecular imprints, which are crosslinked architectures containing specific molecular recognition cavities for targeting compounds, have recently transitioned from in vitro diagnosis to in vivo treatment. In current application scenarios, it has become an important topic to create new biomolecular recognition pathways through molecular imprinting, thereby inhibiting the pathogenesis and regulating the development of diseases. This review starts with a pathological analysis, mainly focusing on the corresponding artificial enzymes, enzyme inhibitors and antibody mimics with enhanced functions that are created by molecular imprinting strategies. Recent advances are highlighted in the use of molecular imprints as tailor-made nanomedicines for the prevention of three major diseases: metabolic syndrome, cancer, and bacterial/viral infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]