Abstract
Bacterial infections represent nowadays the major reason of biomaterials implant failure, however, most of the available implantable materials do not hold antimicrobial properties, thus requiring antibiotic therapy once the infection occurs. The fast raising of antibiotic-resistant pathogens is making this approach as not more effective, leading to the only solution of device removal and causing devastating consequences for patients. Accordingly, there is a large research about alternative strategies based on the employment of materials holding intrinsic antibacterial properties in order to prevent infections. Between these new strategies, new technologies involving the use of carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes, fullerene, graphene and diamond-like carbon shown very promising results. In particular, graphene- and graphene-derived materials (GMs) demonstrated a broad range antibacterial activity toward bacteria, fungi and viruses. These antibacterial activities are attributed mainly to the direct physicochemical interaction between GMs and bacteria that cause a deadly deterioration of cellular components, principally proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. In fact, GMs hold a high affinity to the membrane proteoglycans where they accumulate leading to membrane damages; similarly, after internalization they can interact with bacteria RNA/DNA hydrogen groups interrupting the replicative stage. Moreover, GMs can indirectly determine bacterial death by activating the inflammatory cascade due to active species generation after entering in the physiological environment. On the opposite, despite these bacteria-targeted activities, GMs have been successfully employed as pro-regenerative materials to favor tissue healing for different tissue engineering purposes. Taken into account these GMs biological properties, this review aims at explaining the antibacterial mechanisms underlying graphene as a promising material applicable in biomedical devices.
Highlights
Recent literature studies have shown that graphene-derived materials (GMs) such as Graphene oxide (GO) and its derivates hold a broad-spectrum antiviral activity toward Viruslike pseudorabies viruses (PRV) and an RNA virus porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) (Du et al, 2019)
Based on our research findings, this review aims to illustrate the possible mechanisms that might influence the GMs’ antibacterial activities
This study revealed that the hydrophobic interaction enables the small graphene sheets to penetrate the phospholipid bilayer while forcing the larger nanosheets to lie on the cell membrane surface, interrupting the phospholipid molecules’ interactions
Summary
The number of graphene layers is an important determinant of its antimicrobial activity; i.e., increased GMs’ layers increase the thickness, causing a weakened “nano knife” effect, decreased dispersibility, and increased aggregation tendency, resulting in reduced contact between GMs and microorganisms (Zou et al, 2016). Another important finding demonstrated by Li et al (2013) revealed that micrometer-scale graphene sheets with sharp edges and protruding corners are capable of permeating the cell membrane via coping the decreased energy barrier that the powerful hydrophobic interactions generated.
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