Antimicrobial Surface Coatings Based on Peptide Conjugated Copolymer Brushes

摘要

Implant-associated infections are one of the most challenging postoperative complications, especially in the case of orthopedic implants. Such infections may lead to the patient discomfort, corrective surgeries, replacement of implants, prolonged hospitalization time and significant economic burden to the health system. Due to the increased bacterial resistance to current antibiotics also makes the clinical intervention challenging. Thus the design of novel anti-infectious implant' surface may prove highly beneficial and may yield significant benefit to patients. A potential alternative to current antibiotics is antimicrobial peptides (AMPs)~1. The AMPs kill bacteria through a complex mechanism which makes them unlikely to encounter bacterial resistance and their board spectrum activity also makes them very attractive'. It has also been shown that AMPs show relatively low toxicity to host cells