Bone infections, that result in bone destruction, are one of the great challenges of orthopaedic and maxillofacial surgery. The first line of treatment is the administration of antibiotics. But they are often unable to eradicate the infection. In addition, prolonged treatments increase the likelihood of favoring the selection of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance kills more than 1 million people each year worldwide and has become a global health threat. This calls for radically novel alternatives that are not based on antibiotics to combat microbial infections.
Moreover, when a tissue becomes infected, besides getting rid of the infection it is also necessary to rebuild the damaged tissue. In the case of bone, antimicrobial bone substitutes have been suggested, but most of them rely on the release of chemical agents such as antibiotics. However, this only works for short periods of time and faces the problem of antibiotic resistance.
BAMBBI aims to tackle this challenge by developing synthetic materials based on calcium phosphates that can prevent or even fight infections while simultaneously promoting bone regeneration, without the use of antibiotics. Our proposed strategy is based on the recent discovery that some natural surfaces are capable of killing bacteria by contact. This is possible because these surfaces have a special structure, with tiny protrusions (what we call nanotopography), as small as the bacteria themselves. However, it is hard to fabricate such small nanostructures, and so far they have only been developed on a limited number of materials. Our goal is to develop this kind of bactericidal surfaces in materials that can be used in real 3D implants, such as synthetic bone grafts, that can be used in medical practice.
Moreover, BAMBBI aims to better understand how different types of bacteria react to the nanotopography and surface chemistry of materials when they come into contact with them. In this way, it aims to identify the underlying causes of significant variations in the bactericidal efficacy of a given substrate for different bacterial strains. By addressing these scientific questions, the BAMBBI project aims to design more effective antibacterial implants that can regenerate bone more efficiently, even in the presence of bacterial infections.
