(279d) Electroactive Surfaces and Their Use for Biofilm Removal to Advance Wound Healing

Biofilm infections are present in nearly all chronic wounds, contributing to delayed wound healing. Biofilms are difficult to treat due to their dense structure, slow growth rate, altered metabolism, and protection by extracellular polymeric substances. Current approaches to biofilm infection treatment use a combination of debridement, and systemic and topical antibiotics. These approaches partially treat biofilm infections. However, their performance is hindered due to the depletion of active compounds at deep layers of biofilms and the relative non-susceptibility of biofilm bacteria to conventional antibiotics. This gives rise to persister cells that survive treatment, and leads to infection recurrence. In this work, we present a novel electroactive material surface and an electronic platform for the management of wound biofilm infections by continuously producing effective concentrations of antimicrobials near the electroactive material surface. The concentration of antimicrobials is tuned using a miniaturized electronic device so that the concentration is sufficient to eliminate biofilm infections without apparent damage to host tissue. The efficacy of this strategy was evaluated for the treatment of common biofilm forming pathogens using in vitro and ex vivo biofilm models. We used mathematical modeling with finite-element analysis software COMSOL Multiphysics® to predict the antimicrobial generation rate near electroactive material surfaces.