Since the molecular weights of epitopes are typically in the range of 500-3000 Da and have the properties of small molecules, monomers, and crosslinkers commonly used for small-molecule imprinting could also be used for epitope imprinting. [1d,4a] Moreover, epitopes, as alternatives to protein templates, are usually used to fabricate imprinted materials

Among various artificial antibodies, epitope imprinted polymer has been paid increasingly attention. To modulate the "adsorption and release" behavior by environment stimuli, N-isopropylacrylamide, was adopted to fabricate the thermoresponsive epitope imprinted sites. The prepared imprinted materials could adsorb 46.6 mg/g of target protein with the imprinting factor of 4.0. The template utilization efficiency could reach as high as 8.21%. More importantly, in the real sample, the materials could controllably capture the target protein from the human plasma at 45 °C and release it at 4 °C, which demonstrated the "on-demand" application potentials of such materials in the biomolecule recognition field.