Synthesis of chitosan molecularly imprinted polymers for solid-phase extraction of methandrostenolone

Chitosan molecularly imprinted polymers (CHI-MIPs) for selective extraction of methandrostenolone (MA) was synthesized by cross-linking of chitosan with epichlorohydrin in the presence of MA as the template molecule. Systematic investigations of the influences of template, functional polymer, cross-linker as well as porogen concentrations on the rebinding capacity of CHI-MIPs were carried out. Adsorption and kinetic binding experiments indicated that the synthesized CHI-MIPs had high adsorption and excellent affinity to MA. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) using the prepared CHI-MIPs as adsorbent was then investigated, and the optimum loading and eluting conditions for SPE of the MA were established. The optimized SPE procedure was used to extract the MA from several spiked samples and a good sample clean-up was obtained with the average recoveries ranged from 95.97 to 101.79%.