�Infections following treatment in clinics, retirement homes, and long-term care facilities are a tomb problem for patients, and resistant germs can be particularly crushing. "High infection rates ar in particular observed related to to implants, catheters, and stents," reports Karl Gademann, "those for urinary catheters mounting up to 30 % per week!" In cooperation with his team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, he has developed a work on for coat surfaces with an germicide layer. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their system is based on loanblend molecules derived from various natural products.
For a patient, the results are particularly grave accent if an infection occurs in an implant. Usually, replacement of the affected part is the only if possible intervention. "One particularly attractive approaching is the application of antibiotics straight on the material," says Gademann. To test their idea, the team from Lausanne chose to habit natural product hybrids: biologically active fragments of various natural products are conjugated to combine two different modes of action.
The hybrid produced by Gademann's team is made of three parts: two instinctive products are coupled by means of a polymer bridge. The first substance is anachelin, an iron transporter (siderophore) from blue-green algae. Anachelin strongly and selectively binds metal oxides. The majority of implants are made from a metal oxide: highly biocompatible ti dioxide. Anachelin fixes the hybrid unwaveringly to the surface of the implant. The second base natural product is the antibiotic vancomycin, which disrupts the biogenesis of cell walls and thus boodle bacterial increment. The yoke component is polyethylene diol, a chemically inert, nontoxic polymer. It also assures that bushed bacteria and cell components cannot tie up to the surface.
The hybrid bathroom be applied to titanium dioxide components in a simple dunking procedure. "We were able to march that our hybrid hard attaches to titanium dioxide surfaces and effectively hinders infection with Bacillus subtilis as well as the attachment of cellular material," says Gademann.
"Antimicrobial Surfaces through Natural Product Hybrids"
Jean-Yves Wach, Simone Bonazzi, Karl Gademann
Angewandte Chemie International Edition DOI: 10.1002/anie.200801570
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Angewandte Chemie International Edition is published by the German Chemical Society.
("Angewandte Chemie" is German for applied chemistry).
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