BACTERIA are going to find it much harder to grow on medical implants and so cause infections thanks to a new technique for attaching antibiotics to polymers.
Materials used in implants must be inert, making it difficult to modify their surfaces to attach antibiotics. To get around this, a team led by Marek Urban at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg reacted a polymer, expanded polytetrafluorethylene, with maleic anhydride. This created acid groups on the polymer’s surface, to which they attached polyethyleneglycol chains of varying lengths. They were then able to attach penicillin molecules to the free end of…
