Research Projects

Why are we doing: Antimicrobial resistance [AMR] is a major challenge, specifically in the case of chronic wounds. It is primarily caused due to the continuous usage of antibiotics and the formation of bacterial biofilms developing a protected environment across the wound. Such protected environment across the wound leads to delayed wound healing and may severely impact a person's life, including increased cost of treatment and formation of gangrenes, amputations, and even death. It, therefore, becomes important to control the growth in the initial stages to avoid the biofilm formation. What are we doing: This proposal is envisaged to develop innovative wound dressings to control AMR and biofilm growth by annihilating the bacterial biofilm at the preliminary stage, a much-needed endeavour to prevent delayed wound healing. The potential solution is to look for an orthogonal approach that relies on electroactivity or electrical activity rather than biochemistry. One of the approaches includes the application of short pulses generating a high electric field in the vicinity of biofilm, eventually rupturing the biofilm physically, thus annihilating the bacteria in the initial stage. The other approach is to apply a bias to generate reactive oxygenated species that eventually puncture the biofilm. The primary advantage of the proposed two approaches is that both of them are physical in nature, and no mutation would help develop resistance. The chance of biofilm revival and long-term survival is little, thus, would prevent the delayed wound healing. How are we doing: The methodology behind these approaches is to create conductive and electroactive electrodes on top of traditional wound dressing materials and periodically apply short pulses or electric bias to destroy the film at the nascent stage. Additionally, the biasing would help generate controlled reactive oxygen species aiding in choosing appropriate immunocytes for bacterial destruction. Further, the nanocomposites incorporated into the smart wound dressing would also assist in the complete eradication of the bacterial biofilm. The fabrication of the electrodes will be utilized in a simple way of dip-coating or through screen printing/inkjet printing. Later the miniaturised electronics will be incorporated into the wound dressing to eliminate the bacterial biofilm.