Specific recognition and separation of celastrol with molecularly imprinted polymer based on regenerated cellulose carrier

In this study, the porous cellulose microsphere carrier based on traditional Chinese medicine waste was suc-cessfully used to prepare a molecularly imprinted polymer (SPCC-CSL-MIPs) with specific selectivity for celastrol. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, thermogravimetry, X-ray diffraction and binding experiments were performed to investigate and analyze the structure and adsorption performance of SPCC-CSL-MIPs. The experimental results showed that the SPCC-CSL-MIPs possessed a high adsorption capacity of 14.38 mg/g and a good imprinting factor of 2.36. Furthermore, the SPCC-CSL-MIPs could maintain a stable adsorption performance of 77.98% after 5 cycles. The above results indicated that the prepared SPCC-CSL-MIPs can be employed as an excellent adsorbent for ready and efficient celastrol enrichment and separation, and the content of celastrol in T. wilfordii extract was vastly increased from 0.46% to 3.87%, which proved that SPCC-CSL-MIPs exhibited the excellent ability of specific targeted enrichment and separation of celastrol from the complex matrix.