| Pacific Rim Symposium on Surfaces, Coatings and Interfaces (PacSurf 2018) | |
| Biomaterial Surfaces & Interfaces | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session BI-WeM |
| Session: | Soft Surfaces and Biofunctional Coatings |
| Presenter: | Rachel Rosenzweig, University of California, Irvine |
| Authors: | R. Rosenzweig, University of California, Irvine V.K. Ly, University of California, Irvine K. Perinbam, University of California, Irvine M. Marshall, University of California, Irvine E. Pearlman, University of California, Irvine A. Siryaporn, University of California, Irvine A.F. Yee, University of California, Irvine |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Bacterial and fungal contamination occur in our everyday lives from food spoiling, oral disease, appliance clogging, and industrial naval and aviation fuel-line dependent transportation. More perilously, human pathogenic bacteria and fungi often contaminate medical device surfaces leading to 1.7 million annual nosocomial infections in the US alone. Such infections result in 99,000 annual deaths and $20 billion in healthcare costs. Current solutions that are declining in efficacy due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) include chemical antimicrobials applied topically to or impregnated onto devices and implants. The rise of AMR has created an urgent need for alternative strategies. In this work, the physical antimicrobial effects of nanoimprinted polymer surface structures inspired by insect wing nanotopography are investigated.
Natural nanopillared surface structures found on dragon fly and cicada wings have been found to cause bacterial cell lysis, yet their possible effect has not been studied when applied to eukaryotic filamentous fungi. In this work, AMR prokaryotic bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and clinical isolates of AMR eukaryotic filamentous fungi, Aspergillus fumigatus and Fusarium oxysporum, were cultured on flat and engineered biomimetic nanopillared surfaces on a material often used in medical devices, viz., poly(methyl methacrylate). Surfaces of nanopillared arrays with varying periodicities of 200nm, 300nm, 500nm, and 600nm were fabricated using nanoimprint lithography. Notably, this surface structuring technique is a low-cost and scalable lithographic method translatable to flat and curved surfaces. Cell growth and survival were measured using fluorescence microscopy of GFP tagged bacteria and fungi with propidium iodide DNA stain to indicate compromised cell membranes. The cell-nanosurface interface was further analyzed with scanning electron microscopy. A decrease in P. aeruginosa, A. fumigatus, and F. oxysporum cell growth and an increase in cell death were observed on the biomimetic nanopillared surfaces compared to the flat. This work presents the first demonstration of a scalable, nanostructured, antimicrobial surface against both drug resistant prokaryotic bacteria and eukaryotic fungi. This biofunctional coating can be applied to a broad range of applications in healthcare, industrial transportation, and environmental conservation.