Abstract
Antimicrobial drug resistance has emerged rapidly and thwarted treatment
options, leading to prolonged illness, disability, and death. Despite
considerable efforts to develop new antimicrobial drugs, many bacterial
infections remain difficult to treat due to acquired drug resistance. Compared
to small molecular antibiotics designed to interrupt the bacterial intracellular
biochemical processes, antimicrobial polymers disrupt the membrane integrity,
offering a promising strategy to overcome drug resistance. Bacteria have little
chance of developing resistance mechanism against the physical disruption, which
often leads to cell death.FIU inventors have developed a new class of linear polymers containing positively
charged guanylurea backbones. Compared with most antimicrobial polymers with
positively charged side chains, the new polymer design introduces both positive
charge and hydrophobicity into the flexible polymer backbones.The initial structure−activity relationship studies demonstrate that
poly-(guanylurea piperazine)s (PGU-Ps) exhibit excellent antimicrobial activity
against different types of bacteria with high selectivity. The simplicity of
polymerization without requiring any catalysts or specialized conditions, the
availability of numerous commercial amines, and the biocompatible guanylurea functional
groups are clear advantages over the existing materials. The new design concept
provides a promising method toward the realization of potent antimicrobial
polymers exhibiting high selectivity over mammalian cells and/or high specificity
toward a target microorganism.
Benefit
Less toxic, more efficient and selective than low molecular weight antimicrobial agents Slows/inhibits the progress of drug-resistant microorganism strains because of the distinctive antimicrobial mechanism Overcomes antimicrobial resistance associated problems Provides a simplified synthesis that does not require any catalysts or specialized conditions Provides a simplified polymer architecture by linearly combining the key functional units along the backbone
Market Application
Antimicrobial coating for surgical instruments, medical devices, drugs, wound-dressings, textiles, and food packaging and storage
Publications
Ahmed MS, Annamalai T,
Li X, et al. Synthesis of Antimicrobial Poly(guanylurea)s. Bioconjug Chem.
2018;29(4):1006-1009. doi:10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.8b00057
Brochure
