Bacterial Surface Sensing to Stick or not to Stick?. (360G-Wellcome-103884_Z_14_Z)

Healthcare-associated infections are widely acknowledged as the most frequent adverse events in hospitals and are an enormous health and economic burden. Many such infections involve implanted medical devices such as catheters. Bacteria attach to these and form biofilms, slime cities within which they exhibit 1,000x higher tolerance to antibiotics and host defences than individual bacterial cells. Most strategies for reducing device-associated infections have focused on coating devices with ant imicrobials e.g. silver or antibiotics. Greater success could be achieved by using materials exhibiting intrinsic resistance to bacterial attachment. This would avoid problems associated with antimicrobial impregnation including loss of efficacy due to leaching and antibiotic resistance. The latter is particularly important given the rise of multi-antibiotic resistance and the almost complete lack of new effective antibiotics. Recently we discovered new polymeric materials which resist bacteria l attachment. However we do not understand why bacterial avoid these surfaces-this work will use materials and microbiological sciences strategies to discover how bacteria know they are at or on a surface and decide whether or not to stick to a particular polymer and form a biofilm. This understanding will in turn enable us to develop new strategies for the prevention of device-associated infections.