2012年8月14日 讯 /生物谷BIOON/ --细菌形成被称作生物膜的群落从而影响很多经常被使用的医学设备，包括尿管和静脉导管。这种“数量优势”的方法保护它们免受体内自然防御机制和抗生素的攻击。
英国诺丁汉大学研究人员发现当把新的材料加到医学设备表面时，这些材料排斥细菌从而阻止它们形成生物膜。他们将他们的研究结果发表在Nature Biotechnology期刊上。
在一项研究中，研究人员发现一类结构上相关的材料，能够显著性地降低病原菌(铜绿假单胞菌、金黄色葡萄球菌和大肠杆菌)的附着能力。
这些新的材料通过在尽可能最早的阶段---当细菌首先试图将它们自己附着到医学设备上时---阻止生物膜形成从而阻止感染发生。在实验室中，研究人员能够降低细菌数量高达96.7%，而且在小鼠植入感染模型中，能够有效地阻止细菌附着。通过阻止细菌附着，身体自己的免疫系统能够在细菌有时间产生生物膜之前将它们杀死。
细菌附着和随后的生物膜形成是医学设备性能的关键性挑战。尽管还需进一步研究，但是这项初步研究的结果是大有希望的。(生物谷Bioon.com)
本文编译自New bacteria resistant materials discovered
doi: 10.1038/nbt.2316
PMC:
PMID:
Combinatorial discovery of polymers resistant to bacterial attachment
Andrew L Hook, Chien-Yi Chang, Jing Yang, Jeni Luckett, Alan Cockayne, Steve Atkinson, Ying Mei, Roger Bayston, Derek J Irvine, Robert Langer, Daniel G Anderson, Paul Williams, Martyn C Davies & Morgan R Alexander
Bacterial attachment and subsequent biofilm formation pose key challenges to the optimal performance of medical devices. In this study, we determined the attachment of selected bacterial species to hundreds of polymeric materials in a high-throughput microarray format. Using this method, we identified a group of structurally related materials comprising ester and cyclic hydrocarbon moieties that substantially reduced the attachment of pathogenic bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli). Coating silicone with these 'hit' materials achieved up to a 30-fold (96.7%) reduction in the surface area covered by bacteria compared with a commercial silver hydrogel coating in vitro, and the same material coatings were effective at reducing bacterial attachment in vivo in a mouse implant infection model. These polymers represent a class of materials that reduce the attachment of bacteria that could not have been predicted to have this property from the current understanding of bacteria-surface interactions.
