Robust and Self-healable Antibiofilm Multilayer Coatings

Abstract

The infection induced by implantation of biomedical materials may result from the biofilm formation after bacteria attachment. Hence, the antibiofilm surface coating represents a novel technique to improve the antibacterial activity of biomedical materials. The traditional antibiofilm surface coatings exhibited some disadvantages and provided a limited service life. In this work, we used polyethyleneimine grafted 3-maleimidopropionic acid (PEIM) and poly(acrylic acid) grafted 2-furfurylamine (PAAF) to achieve robust and self-healable crosslinked multilayer coatings, employing Layer-by-Layer (LbL) self-assembly technique and Diels-Alder reaction. Then, thiol-terminated poly((3-acrylamidopropyl) trimethylammonium chloride) (PAMPTMA-SH) was grafted onto the crosslinked multilayer coating by thiol-ene click reaction to form a novel multilayer coating (PEIM/PAAF)10-PAMPTMA. We found that this coating showed robust and self-healable activity, and significantly inhibited the bacterial growth and biofilm formation after infection with Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) by in vitro and in vivo assays for 120 h. In addition, the multilayer coating did not induce significant hemolysis or affect the cell viability of red blood cells. In vivo studies also showed that (PEIM/PAAF)10-PAMPTMA coating efficiently blocked the infiltration of inflammatory cells and gene expression in the mouse skin challenged with E. coli or S. aureus. Taken together, these results showed that the prepared multilayer coating exhibited strong antibiofilm activity and provided a new strategy for the application of highly efficient antibiofilm surface coating of biomedical materials.