Facial fabrication of a hyperbranched poly-l-lysine (HBPL)-surfactant complex coating to inhibit catheter-associated infections

Abstract

Insertion of a peritoneal dialysis (PD) catheter is one of the most common invasive procedures applied in treating chronic kidney disease. However, the PD catheter used in clinical practice is prone to bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation during peritoneal dialysis treatment. Therefore, endowing PD catheters with antibacterial properties and biocompatibility is urgently needed. Polypeptide-based antimicrobial agents have attracted increasing attention because they can combat multidrug-resistant microbes. In this work, we design two kinds of hyperbranched poly-l-lysine (HBPL) based coatings for catheters with arbitrary shapes. We demonstrated that the HBPL/isooctyl phosphate (IP) coating had strong antibacterial properties against S. aureus, while the HBPL/decanoic acid (DA) coating without C-N⁺ showed no bactericidal properties. We showed that the HBPL/IP coated catheters can effectively inhibit the growth of bacteria under static or dynamic flow conditions. Moreover, hemolysis experiments revealed that all the coatings had low hemolytic activities (<0.5 %). For the in vivo experiment, the HBPL/IP coating showed excellent biocompatibility. Overall, the HBPL/IP coating shows great promise as a facial, stable, and effective antibacterial coating to treat catheter-associated infections.