Copper bandage
Scientists have developed antibacterial dressings that accelerate tissue regeneration
The research team of NUST MISIS, together with colleagues from the Czech Republic and Novosibirsk, presented nanostructured copper-coated dressings capable of rapidly releasing copper ions in a liquid medium. This material has great prospects for use as a dressing material for wounds due to an interesting synergistic effect: on the one hand, the rapid release of copper ions kills bacteria, on the other – stimulates tissue regeneration with the activation of immune cells. The results are published in the international scientific journal Membranes.
The antibacterial properties of copper have been known since ancient times. Today, copper-coated nanofibers are in demand in the processes of industrial catalysis, electrochemistry, sensing, and are also being actively studied for use in biomedicine. The biomedical use of copper-coated nanofibers is especially popular because they effectively accelerate wound healing, can filter bacteria and viruses and regenerate bone tissue.
The advantage of using the structure of nanofibers instead of other forms of nano- or micro-materials is their high surface-to-volume ratio and, importantly in production, the ability to make sheets or foils from such materials without any size restrictions.
However, the production of copper–coated nanofibers is a rather complex task that requires a large number of chemical steps, which means significant financial and organizational costs.
An international team of scientists from NUST MISIS, NIIKEL – a branch of ICIG SB RAS and CEITEC BUT for the first time managed to apply copper to heat-sensitive polymer fibers by magnetron sputtering.
"In this paper, we have shown a simple, reliable and scalable method for producing copper-coated nanofibers based on magnetron deposition of copper on a base of biodegradable polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibers. Thermosensitive polymer nanofibers have never been tested as a substrate for copper deposition by magnetron sputtering. The main problem was to apply a well–adhesive metal coating to the surface of the PCL membrane with a high copper content without destroying the nanofiber structure of the substrate," said the co-author of the study, a researcher at the Inorganic Nanomaterials laboratory of NUST MISIS Elizaveta Permyakova.
According to the authors, they conducted for the first time a large-scale simulation of the irradiation of films by the method of molecular dynamics, which made it possible to predict the depth of ion penetration and adjust the deposition conditions to the desired parameters.
The resulting nanofibers were tested as antibacterial agents for various gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Laboratory experiments have shown that the rapid release of copper ions in a liquid medium (concentration up to 3.4 micrograms/ml) led to a significant suppression of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus colonies.
At the same time, copper ions are necessary for the bacteriostatic action of cells of the immune system. Reactive polymer coatings plasmatically deposited on the surface of nanofibers with copper can be used as an accelerating "substrate" of viable proteins, peptides or drugs.
Currently, the research team is investigating the versatility of using the developed nanofibers for biomedical applications. The research was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project No. 20-52-26020) and the Czech Scientific Foundation (project No. GACR 21-12132J).
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