Catheter-associated urinary tract infections, caused by a build-up of biofilm on the catheter surface, are one of the most common nosocomial infections. For this work, we prepared a compositional variant of Tecoflex®, a commercial thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), with peptide-like cationic pendant functional groups to study their effect on biofilm growth. Tecoflex® is used for fabrication of catheters and therefore a variant that shows decreased biofilm accumulation could have the potential to combat nosocomial infections. The cationic pendant groups were incorporated into the polyurethane composition similar to Tecoflex® by copolymerization of an amine functionalized N-substituted diol to give a cationic polyurethane (Tecoflex-NH₃⁺). The antimicrobial properties of this cationic polyurethane were investigated using Escherichia coli, a Gram-negative bacterium and as confirmed by microscopy studies and bactericidal assays, the cationic polyurethane coating exhibited a contact-killing mechanism, and it significantly slowed down the build-up of biofilm compared to Tecoflex® coating. Moreover, the cationic polyurethane demonstrated minimal toxicity towards mammalian cells.

中文翻译：

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常规聚氨酯组合物的改性可提供针对大肠杆菌的显着抗生物膜活性†

由导管表面生物膜的堆积引起的与导管相关的尿路感染是最常见的医院感染之一。对于这项工作，我们制备了商业热塑性聚氨酯（TPU）Tecoflex®的组成变体，带有肽样阳离子侧基官能团，以研究其对生物膜生长的影响。Tecoflex®用于制造导管，因此，一种显示生物膜积聚减少的变体可能具有抵抗医院感染的潜力。通过胺官能化的N-取代的二醇的共聚反应，将阳离子侧基与Tecoflex®相似地掺入聚氨酯组合物中，得到阳离子聚氨酯（Tecoflex-NH ₃ ⁺）。使用革兰氏阴性细菌大肠埃希氏菌对这种阳离子聚氨酯的抗菌性能进行了研究，并通过显微镜研究和杀菌分析证实，阳离子聚氨酯涂层表现出接触杀灭机制，并显着减缓了生物膜的形成。与Tecoflex®涂层相比。而且，阳离子聚氨酯对哺乳动物细胞显示出最小的毒性。