title: Study on the Antimicrobial Properties of Citrate-Based Biodegradable Polymers.
abstract: Citrate-based polymers possess unique advantages for various biomedical applications since citric acid is a natural metabolism product, which is biocompatible and antimicrobial. In polymer synthesis, citric acid also provides multiple functional groups to control the crosslinking of polymers and active binding sites for further conjugation of biomolecules. Our group recently developed a number of citrate-based polymers for various biomedical applications by taking advantage of their controllable chemical, mechanical, and biological characteristics. In this study, various citric acid derived biodegradable polymers were synthesized and investigated for their physicochemical and antimicrobial properties. Results indicate that citric acid derived polymers reduced bacterial proliferation to different degrees based on their chemical composition. Among the studied polymers, poly(octamethylene citrate) showed ~70-80% suppression to microbe proliferation, owing to its relatively higher ratio of citric acid contents. Crosslinked urethane-doped polyester elastomers and biodegradable photoluminescent polymers also exhibited significant bacteria reduction of ~20 and ~50% forStaphylococcus aureusandEscherichia coli, respectively. Thus, the intrinsic antibacterial properties in citrate-based polymers enable them to inhibit bacteria growth without incorporation of antibiotics, silver nanoparticles, and other traditional bacteria-killing agents suggesting that the citrate-based polymers are unique beneficial materials for wound dressing, tissue engineering, and other potential medical applications where antimicrobial property is desired.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Texas at Arlington , Arlington, TX , USA.
authors.forename: Lee-Chun
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Materials Research Institute, The Huck Institutes of The Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA , USA.
authors.forename: Zhiwei
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Texas at Arlington , Arlington, TX , USA.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, University of Texas at Arlington , Arlington, TX , USA.
authors.forename: Kytai Truong
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Materials Research Institute, The Huck Institutes of The Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA , USA.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
keywords: antimicrobial polymers; biodegradable elastomers; citric acid; crosslinking; wound dressing