Grant: Project Grant

Urinary catheters are plastic (polymer) tubes inserted into the bladder to drain urine. Over 25% of hospitalized patients are catheterized during their stay. These tubes are a major cause of infection in hospitalized patients result in prolonged hospital stays with skyrocketing health care costs and may result in death. Currently, antibiotics are our only method of attempting to deal with these infections, but they do not work well due to the fact that bacteria can form special communities on the surface of the catheter-known as biofilms-which render the antibiotics ineffective. In addition, bacteria can activate specialized mechanisms that inactivate antibiotics-to form antibiotics resistant bacteria-making them difficult to kill. The technology in our grant is the latest breakthrough at UBC based on the development of a special coating. Our coating is utilizing a special mechanism to prevent infection- by killing and preventing the bacterial adhesion- to impart long-term activity (>90 days) unlike competing technologies. Our technique both PREVENT and TREAT catheter associated urinary tract infections unlike any other catheter technology available. Our preliminary studies show that the new coating prevents the biofilm on catheters for extended periods in both test tubes and in a mouse model. However, we need to further test how effective the coating is against different types of bacteria using large animal models that is similar to human anatomy. Furthermore, we need to ensure that the coating can be easily and safely produced and have good storage stability, and can be sterilized. The overall goal is to attract investment and prove that we can transfer this technology to other industries for use in the medical field. Although the current project is specifically looking at catheter infections, the data from this project will also provide a general method for preventing infections associated with other medical devices which is a major problem in our hospitals.