Polymers Hold Bacteria At Bay

A high-throughput microarray technique has pinpointed a new class of bacteria-resistant polymers (Nat. Biotechnol., DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2316). The research team at MIT and the U.K.’s University of Nottingham that made the discovery hopes the new materials will help prevent bacterial contamination of medical devices. Although hospitals use biocidal coatings on many medical devices, about 80% of patient infections are caused by aggregates of bacteria, called biofilms, on that equipment. The newfound polymers have the potential not only to improve patient health but also to reduce the cost of treating hospital-acquired infections, says Andrew L. Hook, coauthor of the study and a postdoc at Nottingham. The team has filed a patent for the new polymers, Hook says, and is now talking with medical device manufacturers. To discover the polymers, the Nottingham-MIT researchers built upon polymer microarray technology previously developed in Robert S. Langer’s lab at MIT. The team, led by Nottingham’s Morgan ...