Peptide coated poly(ε-caprolactone) generates antifouling surfaces for medical devices

Resumen

Medical devices inserted into an organism are suspected to the growth of bacteria on their surface to form biofilm. Biofilm can sometime resist antimicrobial treatments. Therefore, implant- associated infections cannot always be treated in an effective way with antibiotics, and in the majority of cases, the only way to fight the infection is to remove the implant. This event poses a public health problem, being crucial to find new strategies to face this serious issue. A promising approach to prevent biofilm formation on medical devices is by inhibiting the adhesion of bacteria to the surface using a coating that avoids bacterial attachment on surfaces, i.e., an antifouling coating. In this work, we used a fluorinated tripeptide that prevent biofilm formation to coat the biopolymer poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL). A polymer suitable for making biodegradable medical devices. Our results show that PCL coated with this tripeptide reduced the amount of bacteria by ~50% when compared to bare PCL. This newly developed PCL can be useful for the formation of catheters, as well as of tissue engineering scaffolds.