Abstract
Diseases and complications related to catheter materials are severe problems in biomedical material applications, increasing the infection risk and medical expenses. Therefore, there is an enormous demand for catheter materials with antibacterial and antifouling properties. Considering this, in this work, we developed an approach of constructing antibacterial surfaces on polyurethane (PU) via surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP). A variety of cationic polymers were grafted on PU. The biocompatibility and antifouling properties of all resulting materials were evaluated and compared. We also used a theoretical algorithm to investigate the anticoagulant mechanism of our PU-based grafts. The hemocompatibility and anti-biofouling performance improved at a 86–112 μg/cm2 grafting density. The theoretical simulation demonstrated that the in vivo anti-fouling performance and optimal biocompatibility of our PU-based materials could be achieved at a 20% grafting degree. We also discuss the mechanism responsible for the hemocompatibility of the cationic brushes fabricated in this work. The results reported in this paper provide insights and novel ideas on material design for applications related to medical catheters.
Highlights
Catheter-related diseases and complications are serious pathogenic problems which increase the infection risk and medical expenses [1,2]
PU samples functionalized with different cationic brushes showed very similar hemocompatibility ranges, with the most optimum value when the reaction time was 25 min
This work reported a strategy of constructing functionalized anti-biofilms containing cationic brushes with antifouling and bactericidal properties
Summary
Catheter-related diseases and complications are serious pathogenic problems which increase the infection risk and medical expenses [1,2]. The attachment of zwitterions to the material surface improves the biocompatibility and antibacterial resistance of the membrane surfaces. They do not destroy bacteria, and small amounts of bacteria on the biofilm surfaces can still accumulate [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23]. Catheter materials need a specific grafting density to achieve a dynamic balance of antibacterial and anticoagulant properties. Because of the excellent antibacterial ability of cationic polymers, we further studied their grafting degree factor, especially with regards to the Acryl-oxy-ethyl-trimethyl-ammonium chloride (DAC) structure and the natural protein conformations. Provide insights and novel ideas for advancing research and the development of materials for catheters
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