(466d) Smart Antibacterial and Antifungal Biomaterials

Bacterial and fungal infections are a leading cause of death worldwide. Rising antimicrobial resistance has made it increasingly difficult to treat these conditions. A 2019 United Nations report warned of the catastrophic health and economic toll of failing to address antimicrobial resistance. Less than a decade prior to this, the World Health Organization warned of a “post antibiotic era” in which resistance causes common infections to become lethal; it is now widely accepted that we are in this era. Microbes inherently evolve resistance mechanisms over time, the rates of which can be exacerbated by frequent use of broad-spectrum antimicrobials and prolonged exposure. The current COVID-19 pandemic is only expected to exacerbate these issues, with widespread use of antibiotics in a large percentage of COVID-19 patients. A rise in severe fungal infections in COVID-19 patients has already been observed (these infections can have mortality rates >50%). It is critical to develop new approaches to treat these infections that can limit unnecessary exposure to antimicrobial therapeutics. In this talk, I will describe our recent work on developing smart biomaterials that have the potential to effectively treat microbial infections while potentially reducing development of resistance. These materials range from liposomal nanoparticles to surface coatings and hydrogels for the treatment of localized and systemic infections. I will focus on the highly tunable hydrogels we have reported for the encapsulation and on-demand release of antibiotics and antifungals in response to bacterial and fungal infections. These materials have demonstrated promising antimicrobial efficacy. I will also describe some of our work on using biomaterials approaches for detecting microbial infections including stimuli-responsive color changing molecules. We are currently exploring avenues to enhance the translational potential of the smart materials we have developed.