Next generation biosensors employing molecularly imprinted polymers as sensing elements for in vitro diagnostics

Biosensors for in vitro diagnostics (IVD) have huge potential and are likely to play a significant role in advanced as well as in the low resource healthcare setups. With time, these devices are gaining traction in cardiac diagnosis, cancer, autoimmune diseases and pathogenic microbial infections. Periodical advancements in nanomaterials employed in biosensors have led to miniaturization and improved characteristics of both plasmonic and electrical sensors. Mostly antibodies are employed in the development of IVD however, there are challenges due to the fragile nature of these biological molecules that adversely affects the storage and shelf life of biosensors. Ongoing developments in the synthesis of artificial antibodies or MIPs that offer improved stability, selectivity and multiplexing ability facilitates their application in biosensors for IVD. In addition, versatility and facile synthesis protocols of MIPs enable their rapid integration into mass manufacturing systems. Here, we discuss the changing dynamics of IVD enabled by MIP based biosensors. We will mainly focus on microbes and clinically relevant biomarkers that have been targeted for infectious disease detection and different imprinting strategies relevant to them. The biosensor platforms employing MIPs for their POC and IVD potential for biological samples have been discussed. The commercial potential of MIPs which has translated into 8 commercial platforms so far including IVD have been delineated. To improve the performance of MIPs in general, the computationally aided MIP design that is actively focused to address some of the challenges associated with the translation of MIPs for various applications including IVD have been discussed.