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Ayatallah Ghaffari, Sahand

University of British Columbia

Despite numerous advantages and versatile applications, medical implants suffer from bacterial colonization and biofilm formation that can lead to many complications. Despite a great degree of effort being put into research and development of antimicrobial technologies, there remains an unmet need for a technology that can be incorporated and applied to a variety of polymeric biomaterials in various fields of medicine and in different settings to decontaminate implant surfaces and reduce biofilm formation and further infection. This thesis is an effort to offer a practical alternative antimicrobial technology using surface photosterilization of both silicone-based urinary catheters and methacrylate-based dental resin fillers that are embedded with a ruthenium (Ru) photosensitizer (PS) and are activated using a LED light source. Throughout this work, the synthesis and characterization of the PS and incorporation methods into both polymers are discussed, and a set of experiments are performed to identify the chemical, physical, and mechanical properties of the final biomaterials. Both Ru-embedded polymers underwent rigorous testing to evaluate their antimicrobial efficacy as surface decontaminating agents for both short (15 min) and prolonged (24 h) periods of LED exposure time which resulted in significant reduction in surface-adhered bacteria and biofilm maturation. These findings can pave the way for successful implementation of photosterilization as a technology with great potential to significantly reduce the extent of both catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) and caries-inducing oral infections.

Text

2024-05-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88205

Experimental Medicine

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/