Synthetic Neuraminidases : Nanostructured Materials for Environmental Monitoring

• The risks to society associated with the spread of new strains of influenza with human pathogenicity, or with impact on agricultureare significant. Our capacity to challenge the threat of the virus is dependent upon our ability to develop new vaccines, and upon ouraccess to effective virus-targeted small molecule pharmaceuticals. The current primary small molecule weapons oseltamivir(Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) currently form our last line of defence against this virus. More recently, the identification ofstrains resistant to (in particular) drugs targeting neuraminidase has awoken serious concern. Equally as worrying is the clearevidence of the presence of these substances in the World’s water systems which has now come forth. Collectively, this makes thedevelopment of techniques giving us better insight into the virus and antiviral agents a priority. Robust methods for the rapid andsensitive determination of these substances are required, especially as the monitoring methods should be able to withstand therigours of environments not normally conducive to biomacromolecules (temperature, toxic substances etc) e.g. antibodies.Advanced materials fulfilling these requirements can be obtained by Molecular Imprinting, which is a technique forproducing highly selective synthetic receptors for biochemical and chemical structures in synthetic polymers. The polymerscontain nano-structured cavities that are of complementary functional and structural character to predetermined target.The technique entails the judicious selection of a monomer or monomer mixture with chemical functionality comple-mentary to that of the imprint species (template). The complementary interacting functionalities (reversible covalent ornon-covalent) form predictable solution structures, which after polymerisation in the presence of a suitable cross linkingagent and removal of the template lead to the defining of recognition sites of complementary steric and functionaltopography to the template molecule. These sites give selective recognition of the template. Furthermore, by analogy tocatalytic antibody production, using transition state analogues as templates yields synthetic enzymes.Synthetic polymers with neuraminidase-like behaviour have been designed through the screening of candidate polymersystems using a combination of molecular dynamics and NMR studies. The characterisation of the resulting materials hasdemonstrated systems with selectivity for the targeted antiviral agents. Our studies illustrate the potential of these uniquenanostructured materials for the monitoring of these antiviral agents in the environment, which is an important aspect inefforts aimed at limiting the development of resistant strains, and as a tool for policy makers.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Kemi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Chemical Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Chemistry

Kemi

Organisk kemi

Organic Chemistry

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)