Antibiofilm therapy using local application of bacteriophages (Antibio-LAB)

Background

The Antibio-LAB project aims to develop and asses a local application mode for bacteriophage therapy of difficult to treat, antibiotic resistant orthopaedic device-associated infections. The Antibio-LAB project aims to optimise an injectable and degradable thermo-responsive hyaluronan formulation for the delivery of these phages directly to the site of infection. Within this initial project period, several tests regarding loading phages into the thermo-responsive HA-pNIPAM hydrogel were performed. The release profile, kinetics and storage conditions of phages in the hydrogel were analysed. Overall, the thermo-responsive HA-pNIPAM hydrogel seems to be suitable for ISP-phage embedding, while retaining its thermo-responsive properties. Release of phage for the gelled HA-pNIPAM samples can be observed for 21 days. Hydrogels with looser polymer networks (I.e. lower polymer concentration) do not show a faster release of phage load, indicating that the diffusion of ISP-phage from the hydrogel is minimally hindered by the polymer network at all tested concentrations.