Calixarene: a versatile scaffold for the development of highly sensitive biosensors

ABSTRACT

Calix[n]arenes, as the ‘third-generation’ host molecules, are cyclic oligomer, featuring a unique three-dimensional structure with a hydrophobic cavity, allowing the interaction with many size-matched guest molecules, and a surface which can be functionalised at both the upper and lower rims with several functional groups to tailor the recognition properties towards a specific class of analytes for various applications. In the last two decades, due to their configuration, unique molecule recognition function and aggregation properties, calixarenes and their derivatives have attracted considerable attention as a new versatile scaffold for highly sensitive detection and site-oriented immobilisation in biosensor development. In this review, the development of sensors featuring calixarene-based transducers tuned for binding many analytes, ranging from simple (i.e., amino acids and neurotransmitters) to complex (i.e., enzymes and antibodies) organic molecules, was described. The rational design, the synthetic strategies fine-tuned to prepare these complex structures and their grafting in surface modification were included.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Calix[4]arene
• resorc[4]arene
• site-directed immobilisation
• molecular recognition
• biosensor

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge networking contributions by the COST Action CM1407 “Challenging Organic Syntheses Inspired by Nature-From Natural Products Chemistry to Drug Discovery”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) under Grant number 2017SXBSX$ (PRIN project 2017); MIUR under the Excellence Departments Grant to the Department of Chemistry and Technology of Drugs, Sapienza University of Rome; MIUR under PON (Programma Operativo Nazionale) Grant number ARS01_00432 (PROGEMA) and Sapienza University of Rome under Grant ‘Progetti Ateneo 2019’.