University of Warwick develop bacteria-fighting polymers with light

Researchers from the Department of Chemistry and Warwick Medical School have developed a way to synthesise large libraries of polymers to make their screening for antimicrobial activity faster, and without the need to use sealed vials.

The new methodology may help identify antimicrobials for a range of applications from personal care to coatings.

New antimicrobials have been identified by using multiple ‘building blocks’ in their polymers some of which appear to inhibit bacteria growth.

Due to the method allowing screenings of hundreds of different structures, this enables researchers to discover new properties, which in this case was antibiotic activity.

The team says they were inspired by host-defence peptides which is a broad spectrum of antimicrobials and function by breaking apart the membrane of bacteria.

“Whilst many people have successfully mimicked antimicrobial peptides with polymers, the limiting step was the number of different combinations of building blocks you can use,” said Professor Matthew Gibson from Warwick’s Department of Chemistry and Warwick Medical School.

“We used simple robotics and a light controlled polymerisation, which lets us do the chemistry open to air, without any sealed vials which are essential for most polymer syntheses”

“We prepared the polymers in such a way that at the end of the reaction, we use the robotics to mix polymers directly with bacteria so we could look for unexpected activity, which we achieved,” added Dr Sarah-Jane Richards, from the Gibson Group at the University of Warwick.

“Surprisingly, the best materials do not seem to break apart the bacteria as we predicted, but rather inhibit their growth. We are investigating this further."