Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

With an aging population, there are increasing demands for biomaterials and biomedical devices to replace or restore tissue functions. In orthopaedics alone, more than 100,000 artificial hip and knee joints in Canada are implanted every year. Prosthetic joint infections are major complications in orthopaedic surgery. The overall infection rate is 0.5-5% for joint replacement surgery and infection also accounts for about 18% of the total implant failure. Implant infection brings severe consequences to the patients and the health care system, including substantially prolonged hospitalization, increased number of revision surgery, significant increase in healthcare costs, and increased mortality rate. Local delivery of traditional antibiotics could prevent bacteria adhesion and peri-implant infection. However, a serious concern over using traditional antibiotics such as vancomycin for local delivery is the development and spreading of antibiotic resistant pathogens. Such antibiotic resistance can lead to devastating effects and has become a serious public health problem.This proposal is aimed at developing novel biomaterial technologies to address a key challenge in orthopaedic devices: preventing device associated infections, and at same time achieving early bone integration. We have identified two leading components essential to address the challenge: calcium phosphate bioceramics for promoting bone healing and antimicrobial peptides that do not develop antibiotic resistance. We propose to carry out systematic and fundamental studies to develop calcium phosphate-antimicrobial peptide composites. Our first objective is to investigate the interactions between calcium phosphates and the antimicrobial peptides in order to achieve controlled peptide delivery. The second objective is to develop the composites as coatings on implant materials. The long-term objectives are to develop a new generation of orthopaedic implants and to build sustained biomaterials research and training program. This research will lead to new biomedical technologies that will enable Canadian biomedical industry to be competitive, bring new solution to medical professionals in combating device infections, and improve the health care and quality of life of Canadians.