Antibacterial Polymers: From Natural Inspiration to Practical Applications
A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 September 2011) | Viewed by 69882
Special Issue Editor
Interests: bioinspired and biomimetic structures; supramolecular polymer science; self organization; materials-immunology; responsive materials/surfaces; polymers for biomedical science; well-defined macromolecular architectures; functional materials; novel biomaterials; chemically defined hydrogels
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The discovery of antibiotics, almost one hundred years ago, changed our lives more significantly than any other single event in medical history. Our scientific success was so great that in 1969, the US Surgeon General stated that it was time to ‘close the books on infectious diseases’. Of course, many scientist knew this was not true and the rapid development of bacterial resistance to our most powerful antibiotics has brought much needed attention to this area. In the U.S. alone there are 2 million new cases of hospital-acquired infections annually leading to 90,000 deaths and 5 billion dollars of added healthcare costs. Couple these numbers with the appearance of new antibiotic resistant bacterial strains and the increasing occurrences of community-type outbreaks, and clearly this is an important problem. The role that antimicrobial materials play in treating infection can be significant. It is well understood that bacterial infections are spread in numerous ways including on health-care workers garments. This special issue aims to highlight the most current work in the field today while at the same time highlighting the important challenges and obstacles confronted by those working at the cutting-edge. This special issue broadens the discussion beyond only classical cationic polymers to include inspiration from natural peptides. An emerging class of molecules inspired by these peptides has resulted in antimicrobial activity and, importantly, selectivity that rivals the natural agents.
Prof. Dr. Gregory N. Tew
Guest Editor
Keywords
- antimicrobial peptides
- ROMP
- cationic
- surfaces
- N-halamines
- triclosan
- PHMB
- quats
- silver
- urethanes
- fabrics
- antibacterial
- E. coli
- S. aurues
- MRSA
- latex
- polyvinyl pyridine
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