Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

This research addresses serious challenge in hospital acquired infections: the prevention of bacterial infections associated with urological devices and bacterial growth in blood products for transfusion. Urinary catheters is one of most frequently used medical device in hospitals in North America and catheter associated infections account for a major share of hospital acquired infectious. In addition to increased mortality, these complications add millions of extra health care costs. Currently, antibiotics are our only method of attempting to deal with these infections, but do not work well due to intrinsic multidrug resistance of biofilms on catheter surface. The transfusion of bacterial contaminated blood products is another longstanding serious complication. In North America, approximately 15 million units of packed red blood cells and 4.5 million units of platelets are transfused every year. The incidence of bacterial contamination associated with the storage is as high as 1per every 2000 units. This represents a huge cost to the health care system. Our collaborative project seeks novel solutions to these issues by developing new generation antibacterial surface coating on urinary catheters and blood bags without employing classical antibiotics. Since catheters, and blood bags are made of common plastic materials, similar technology can be applied to each devices. The project is based on the latest breakthroughs at UBC on screening and optimization of short broad spectrum cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and their application to implant surfaces. The objectives of the project will be achieved by i development of hydrophilic polymer brush based AMP coating for catheters, and blood bags and the optimization of their antimicrobial/anti-biofilm activity and biocompatibility, ii) elucidation of the mechanismof action of surface immobilized AMPs, iii) in vitro and in vivo evaluations of AMP coated blood bags and catheters in an animal infection model. The project will establish a strong collaboration among, science, engineering and medicine, and provide unique HQP training opportunities. The novel anti-infection coatings will also provide a general method for preventing bacterial infections associated with other medical devices.