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Design and development of universal antibiofilm coatings for urinary catheters

University of British Columbia

Catheter-associated urinary tract infection is one of the most common medical device-associated complications that has caused significant morbidity, mortality and costs. There is a significant need for new technologies to prevent such catheter-related infections. Despite advancements in the development of antimicrobial and antibiofilm coatings in recent years, current coating technologies to prevent biofilm formation fail to address all factors, including prevention of biological deposition, inhibition of bacterial colonization, adaptation to diverse materials, easy application to devices of various sizes and shapes, and stability of the coating. This thesis addresses my attempts to explore new knowledge and develop novel technologies to address this important medical need. In Chapter 2, by using a high throughput screening method, we identified a highly durable thin hydrophilic coating which prevents biofilm formation over a long-term period (>4 weeks) in the presence of high concentration of bacteria. Furthermore, this coating can easily be applied to diverse substrates of varying shapes and material properties via a dip coating process and demonstrates a broad spectrum of bacterial adhesion resistance. When the coating was applied to commercial catheters, biofilm formation was consistently less with coated catheter than with uncoated catheters both in vitro and in vivo. In Chapter 3, we propose a new mechanism for the stable coating formation between polycatecholamines and hydrophilic polymers. The hydrophilic polymers have an active role in the co-assembly and co-deposition process, which is influenced by the molecular weight and chemistry of the hydrophilic polymer. We determined that the self-assembly of different polycatecholamines is influenced by different polymers but the nature of polycatecholamine is not the major factor that influences the final characteristics of the coating. In Chapter 4, a facile layer-by-layer assembly process of a hydrophilic polymer with a natural polyphenol tannic acid was used to fabricate stable bacteria-resistant multilayers with controlled thickness. We demonstrated that the main driving force in this layer-by-layer assembly process is the hydrogen bonding between the polymers and tannic acid. This work demonstrates the fabrication of novel bacteria-resistant coatings and provides a potential platform incorporate antimicrobial agents for the development of multifunctional coatings.

Text

2021-03-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/73835

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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