Development of a Voltammetric Sensor for the Selective Determination of Tumour Biomarker-Vanillylmandelic Acid

This article describes the development of a molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) based sensor for the determination of vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), which is an important biomarker for tumours like neuroblastoma and pheochromocytoma. Only bulk synthesis-based MIPs sensors have been reported so far for VMA. The proposed sensor, which utilizes poly (o-Amino phenol) (pOAP) for the MIPs fabrication and (Taurine-Glutamic acid) copolymer (p(TR-GA)) to enhance sensitivity, possesses notable sensing characteristics. Synthesis and deposition of the polymers on the glassy carbon electrode has been carried out using electrochemical technique. Ample interactions between OAP monomer units and VMA molecules resulted in the formation of imprints with good recognition ability. Imprinting factor associated with the sensor has been found to be 5.0 and the determination of VMA is possible in the linear range of 7.00 × 10^–5–8.00 × 10^–7 mol/L. The aim to eliminate the interference from coexisting species of VMA could be favourably achieved through this MIPs sensor. Moreover, the sensor possesses superior performance over the reported bulk synthesis-based MIPs sensors for VMA.