## 3 MIPs' Applications
### MIPs as Chemical Sensors and Biosensors
In this case, the electropolymerization approach was used to prepare an aniline-co-\(O\)-phenylenediamine atropine MIP layer onto a piezoelectric quartz crystal to realize a bulk acoustic-wave sensor. The MIP sensor obtained was successfully employed to determine atropine concentrations in human serum and urine [148]. Moreover, a sorbitol-based MIP was also prepared by electropolymerization of o-phenylenediamine on a QCM surface [149]. Over a concentration range of 0-16 mM the resulting sensor showed high selectivity for sorbitol, compared with glucose, glycerol, mannitol and fructose. In another study, an imprinted polymer-coated sensor was created by [PERSON] _et al._ to determine the amount of paracetamol and nicotine in biological fluids [150, 151]. In this case, piezoelectric quartz crystal surface was modified using a paracetamol imprinted polymer as sensing materials to obtain selectivity for a Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) sensor. The kinetic impedance analysis showed no change in the viscoelasticity of the polymer coating during the detection. Satisfactory results have been obtained in the recognition of paracetamol in human serum and urine. Recently, [PERSON] and co-workers have developed a new QCM sensor for specific determination of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), an oxidative stress marker [152]. The MIPs was prepared by _in situ_ polymerization of methacryloylamidohistidine-platinum(II) and _N-N'_-methylenebisacrylamide on QCM surface and used to determine the amount of (8-OHdG) in the blood of cancer patients. QCM-MIP sensor was also realized for detection of daminozide, a potential carcinogenic chemical important in food safety [5] but also for detection of environmental pollutants such as bisphenol A [153], acetaldehyde [153] and monoterenes [154]. MIPs were also widely employed as sensors for enantiomeric separation of different compounds such as R and S-propranolol, d and l-tryptophan, and d and l-serine enantiomers [147, 155, 156]. Several efforts to adapt MIP-based QCM sensing technology to chiral recognition of (\(S\))-propranolol have been reported by [PERSON] and co-workers that created an enantioselective chiral recognition layerson the gold-coated surfaces of 5 MHz quartz crystals employing a poly(TRIM-_co_-MAA) MIP formulation [147]. To ensure the formation of homogeneous MIP coatings and to minimize inhibition of polymerization by oxygen, the imprinting mixture was sandwiched between the QCM and a quartz cover plate before polymerization. This sandwich exposed to UV irradiation produced MIP films 2 \(\upmu\)m thick with good adherence to the supporting resonator surface. The results obtained showed a pronounced decrease in the resonator frequency for (_S_)-propanol over the analyte concentration range investigated (0.05 to 1.5 mmol L\({}^{-1}\)) whereas (_R_)-propanol induced only minor frequency changes. However, in terms of sensibility, MIP-based biomimetic sensors are still rather inferior to biosensors because they require further optimization of the MIPs and the transducers. An interesting area of research was the preparation of mass sensitive MIP sensors for cells and viruses. In particular, [PERSON] and co-workers realized a QCM-MIP sensor able to bind with excellent specificity the yeast _Saccaromyces cerevisiae_ used as template in the imprinting process [157]. The same authors used a similar approach to obtain a molecularly imprinted polymer sensor for tobacco mosaic virus and red blood cells [158,159]. During the last decade, the MIP technology has been extensively studied for its potential applications in pseudo-immunoassay [28]. In particular, the first Molecularly Imprinted Sorbent Assay (MIA) was reported by [PERSON] for detection of theophylline in serum in comparison with the commercial Enzyme-Multiplied Immunoassay Technique (EMIT) [160]. This first MIA showed an excellent correlation (correlation coefficient = 0.98) with EMIT, and also produced a strikingly similar cross-reactivity profile to that of natural antibodies.