The CDC’s Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) Prevalence Survey estimated 722,000 HAIs in U.S. acute care hospitals in 2011, equivalent to ~1 out of every 25 inpatients having at least one health care–associated infection on any given day. Approximately 75,000 deaths were attributed to these infections, or about 10% of the total HAIs. As such, further research into self-sterilizing and alternative materials (fabrics, plastics, or coatings) with antimicrobial properties is needed to prevent pathogen transmission to immunocompromised patients in hospitals or other high-risk environments. Toward this objective, we are developing platform technologies for anti-infective materials based upon photodynamic inactivation, a branch of photomedicine that employs singlet oxygen (1O2) as the biocidal agent to cause non-specific oxidative damage as the means to circumvent drug-resistance. Using electrospinning, we have prepared a non-woven textile, termed PAN-Por(+), comprised of polyacrylonitrile nanofibers embedded with a porphyrin-based cationic photosensitizer. Photosensitizer loading was determined to be 34.8 nmol/mg material, with thermostability to 300 °C. Antibacterial efficacy was evaluated against four bacteria belonging to the ESKAPE family of pathogens [Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Klebsiella pneumoniae], as well as Escherichia coli. Our results demonstrated broad photodynamic inactivation of all bacterial strains studied upon illumination (30 min, 65±5 mW/cm2, 400-700 nm) by a minimum of 99.9996+% (5.8 log units) regardless of taxonomic classification. PAN-Por(+) also inactivated human adenovirus-5 (~99.8% reduction in PFU/mL) and vesicular stomatitis virus (&gt;7 log units reduction in PFU/mL). When compared to cellulose-based materials employing this same photosensitizer, the higher levels of photodynamic inactivation achieved here with PAN-Por(+) are likely due to the combined effects of higher photosensitizer loading and a greater surface area imparted by the use of nanofibers. These results demonstrate the potential of photosensitizer-embedded polyacrylonitrile nanofibers to serve as scalable scaffolds for anti-infective or self-sterilizing materials against both bacteria and viruses when employing a photodynamic inactivation mode of action.

Photosensitizer-Embedded polyacrylonitrile nanofibers as an antimicrobial non-woven textile

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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