Albumin biofunctionalization to minimize the Staphylococcus aureus adhesion on solid substrates

PFAFFEN, VALERIA; VALENTI, LAURA E.; VALENTI, LAURA E.; GIACOMELLI, CARLA E.; MARTÍN, MARÍA LAURA; GIACOMELLI, CARLA E.; MARTÍN, MARÍA LAURA; PFAFFEN, VALERIA

COLLOIDS AND SURFACES B-BIOINTERFACES

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2018 vol. 167 p. 156 - 164

0927-7765

tStaphylococcus aureus has become the most common opportunistic microorganism related to nosocomialinfections due to the bacteria capacity to form biofilms on biomedical devices and implants. Since bacte-rial adhesion is the first step in this pathogenesis, it is evident that inhibiting such a process will reducethe opportunity for bacterial colonization on the devices. This work is aimed at optimizing a surfacebiofunctionalization strategy to inhibit the adhesion of S. aureus on solid substrates. The first part of thework deals with the albumin adsorption-desorption process, studied by a factorial design of experimentsto explore a wide range of experimental factors (protein concentration, pH, flow rate and adsorptiontime) and responses (initial adsorption rate, adsorbed amount, desorbed extent) for hydrophilic andhydrophobic substrates, with a reduced number of experiments. This approach allows the simultaneousevaluation of the factors affecting the albumin adsorption-desorption process to find a qualitative cor-relation with the amount of alive S. aureus adhered on albumin biofunctionalized substrates. The resultsof this work point to a relationship between bacterial adhesion and the degree of albumin relaxation onthe solid substrate. In fact, the inhibition of bacterial adhesion on albumin biofunctionalized substratesis due to the surface perturbation on the native structure of the protein. On this base, a biofunctional-ization strategy was designed using a solution of thermally treated albumin molecules (higher -sheetor unordered secondary structure elements) to biofunctionalize solid substrates by dipping. With thesealbumin biofunctionalized substrates S. aureus adhesion was minimized.