Gregory A. Caputo, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ
With antimicrobial resistance, hospital acquired infections, and device-associated infections all on the rise, the need for novel approaches to antimicrobial treatments and materials is of significant need in the biomedical field. Research endeavors across multiple disciplines have been addressing this issue from various perspectives including traditional small molecules, peptides, proteins, polymers, probiotics, phage, and combinatorial approaches. Vacuum approaches, such as sputtering and other physical vapor deposition techniques, have been evolving to make coatings with bactericidal characteristics. Antimicrobial surface development has been an area of great interest for materials and devices and have also involved numerous specific functional modalities.
Our team has focused on the development of metal based, thin film coatings for medical device applications, specifically bone/joint implants, and electrostimulation devices. Testing the bactericidal activity of these vacuum applied coatings require modifications to traditional biochemical testing techniques. After modifying the testing techniques, we have shown that these coatings demonstrate remarkable broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, high bioavailability of the active compounds to interact with bacterial targets, minimal cytotoxicity, and retention of conductivity properties essential in electrostimulators. The coatings are versatile, with significant tunability to tailor the active component release profiles to the application of the material.
Our current approaches and results will be discussed, with a focus on the antimicrobial methodology used to evaluate the efficacy of antibacterial activity specifically on vacuum applied coatings. These techniques will also be discussed regarding their potential role in the investigation of nature-inspired topographies controlling biofilm adhesion. In general, these updated or modified assays will be discussed to describe how they can interact and synergize with traditional surface/materials characterization approaches to enhance the understanding of antimicrobial mechanisms.