| AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Biomaterial Interfaces | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session BI1-TuA |
| Session: | Bacteria on Surfaces |
| Presenter: | M.R. Alexander, University of Nottingham, UK |
| Authors: | A.L. Hook, University of Nottingham, UK J. Yang, University of Nottingham, UK C.-Y. Chang, University of Nottingham, UK D.G. Anderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology R. Langer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology S. Atkinson, University of Nottingham, UK P. Williams, University of Nottingham, UK M.C. Davies, University of Nottingham, UK M.R. Alexander, University of Nottingham, UK |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Biofilm formation leads to a 1000 times increase in antibiotic tolerance compared with planktonic bacteria and is associated with 80% of hospital acquired infections, resulting in $3.0 billion in excess health-care costs each year in the U.S alone. Thus, new materials for biomedical devices that prevent biofilm formation would offer enormous benefits to the health industry and patient welfare. Polymer microarrays are emerging as a key enabling technology for the discovery of new biomaterials.1 This platform enables a large combinatorial space to be rapidly screened by a biological assay to identify new materials that fulfil a given performance criterion.2 Furthermore, utilising a high throughput surface characterisation approach the surface chemical and physical properties of each material can be understood and related to the biological performance in order to understand the material-biological interaction.3 A method for forming polymer microarrays has been developed using contact printing to deposit nanolitre volumes of premixed acrylate monomer and initiator to defined locations on a poly(HEMA) coated glass slide with UV photo-initiation.4 We have developed a high throughput bacterial attachment assay based on GFP transfected pathogens that is compatible with the polymer microarray format. In our high throughput strategy we initially produced an array containing hundreds of unique materials that was designed to maximise the combinatorial space explored. From this array ‘hit’ monomer compositions were identified that were used to design a second generation array that explored systematic variations in material compositions in order to focus onto the optimal material composition. This has been utilised to identify new materials that resist the formation of bacteria and show promise for implementation to various biomedical devices such as urinary tract catheters that are susceptible to bacterial colonisation.
1 A. L. Hook, D. Anderson, R. Langer, P. Williams, M. C. Davies, and M. R. Alexander, Biomaterials 2010, 31(2), 187.
2 Y. Mei, S. Gerecht, M. Taylor, A. J. Urquhart, S. R. Bogatyrev, S. W. Cho, M. C. Davies, M. R. Alexander, R. S. Langer, D. G. Anderson, Adv. Mater. 2009, 21(27), 2781.
3 A. J. Urquhart, D. G. Anderson, M. Taylor, M. R. Alexander, R. Langer, M. C. Davies, Adv.Mater. 2007, 19(18), 2486.
4 D. G. Anderson, S. Levenberg, R. Langer, Nat.Biotechnol. 2004, 22(7), 863.