Formulation and characterization of antimicrobial quaternary ammonium dendrimer in poly(methyl methcarylate) bone cement.

The use of novel antimicrobial molecules in bone cement can improve efficiency of recuperation after arthroplasty or joint replacement surgeries, avoiding the risks associated with antibiotic resistant antimicrobial agents. Nanomaterials particularly dendrimers are particularly useful for making broad spectrum killing agents owing to their large surface areas and functionalities. Therefore, we have synthesized generation 1 quaternary ammonium dendrimer of tripropylene glycol diacrylate (TPGDA) using octyl iodide (OI) [TPGDA G1.0 (=) quaternary octyl iodide (QOI)] and capitalized on their capabilities of contact killing based mechanism. We formulated different TPGDA G1.0 (=) QOI antimicrobial agent loaded liquid component composed of methyl methacrylate monomer and N,N-dimethyl-p-toluidine coinitiator. Different polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) based experimental bone cement formulations were made and dendrimer concentration was optimized. Mechanical strength and compressive modulus of modified bone cement decreased on increasing concentrations and 10% was optimized for further analysis. The mechanical strength of bone cement yield the similar trend in wet conditions bone cement immersed in artificially created stimulated body fluids. Ten percent TPGDA G1.0 (=) QOI in bone cement was sufficient to kill gram positive and negative bacteria and its property is retained even after a period of 30 days. Thus novel dendritic structures show promise for clinical antimicrobial activity while retaining mechanical properties of bone cements. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 105B: 521-530, 2017.

Antimicrobial Efficacy of Synthesized Quaternary Ammonium Polyamidoamine Dendrimers and Dendritic Polymer Network.

Water treatment to mitigate microbial contaminants is a major challenge across globe paving the way to develop novel antimicrobial compounds. We aim at architecting antibacterial moiety eventually catering to vast water treatment industry. In this research study, quaternary ammonium functionalized polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimer and PAMAM-ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) dendritic polymer network were synthesized. These materials were characterized by various analytical techniques like ATR-FTIR, 1HNMR, DSC etc. Water soluble generation (G) 1.0 PAMAM dendrimer and water insoluble PAMAM G1.0 EGDMA dendritic polymer network were quaternized by reacting with dilute hydrochloric acid (HCI) and octyl iodide (01) respectively. Both quaternary ammonium dendrimer products were found to exhibit potent bactericidal activity against a group of common Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. 10 mg/L concentration of liquid PAMAM G1.0 QHCI was efficient to kill 100% bacteria rapidly within an incubation time of just 2 minutes. In addition, quaternary ammonium dendritic polymer network PAMAM G1.0-EGDMA Q OI demonstrated good contact killing antimicrobial property without releasing any active molecule into the surrounding medium and disinfected contaminated water within 5 minutes. Both quaternary ammonium dendrimer and dendritic polymer network showed negligible cytotoxicity in MTT assay indicating their potential as a viable antimicrobial agent.

Novel functionalized fluorescent polymeric nanoparticles for immobilization of biomolecules.

Novel, size controlled fluorescent polymeric nanoparticles (FPNP) were synthesized having acetoacetoxy functionality on the surface for immobilization of biomolecules which can be utilized as biomarkers and labels in fluoroimmunoassays. Core-shell nanoparticles of poly(styrene, St-methyl methacrylate, MMA-acetoacetoxy ethyl methacrylate, AAEM), stabilized by various concentrations of surfactant, sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS), were obtained by facile miniemulsion co-polymerization encapsulated with pyrene molecules in their hydrophobic core. Analytical, spectroscopic and imaging characterization techniques revealed the formation of stable, monodisperse, spherical nano sized particles exhibiting high luminescence properties. Particles with 1% SLS (S1) showed good dispersion stability and fluorescence intensity and were chosen as ideal candidates for further immobilization studies. Steady state fluorescence studies showed 10 times higher fluorescence intensity of S1 nanoparticles than that of pyrene solution in solvent-toluene at the same concentration. Environmental factors such as pH, ionic strength and time were found to have no effect on fluorescence intensity of FPNPs. Surface ß-di-ketone groups were utilized for the covalent immobilization of enzyme conjugated antibodies without any activation or pre-treatment of nanoparticles.

Highly sensitive detection of Salmonella typhi using surface aminated polycarbonate membrane enhanced-ELISA.

The identification of pathogenic bacteria in water is important for addressing preventive and treatment issues regarding health and safety. A highly sensitive and specific solid-phase sandwich ELISA procedure was developed for the detection of typhoid causing extremely lethal water borne pathogen Salmonella typhi (S. typhi) on modified isopore polycarbonate (PC) black membranes. PC membranes were chemically derivatized to generate amino groups on the surface maintaining their pysico-optico properties. Surface modified PC membranes were characterized by ATR-FTIR spectrometer, goniometer and scanning electron microscope. Polyclonal somatic 'O' type antibodies (Abs) against whole cell S. typhi were immobilized on them by following the amine glutaraldehyde chemistry. Antibody immobilized membranes captured S. typhi from buffer solution and this complex was detected colourimetrically using HRP labelled S. typhi Ab. A detection limit of 2×10(3)cells/ml of bacteria was achieved with the modified PC membranes without any pre-enrichment step as against 10(6)-10(7)CFU/ml of bacteria by typical ELISA method. The assay was demonstrated to be specific for the target bacteria when compared with other cross-reactant water borne pathogens. The intra- and inter-assay precision for 10(4) and 10(5)cells/ml was 5.3-7.4 and 10.3-19.7% respectively. The developed immunoassay for the detection of S. typhi is simple, easy to handle, sensitive specific, reproducible and cost effective in comparison with the commercially existing immunochromatographic assays.

Detection of bioconjugated quantum dots passivated with different ligands for bio-applications.

Bioconjugation of quantum dots has resulted in a significant increase in resolution of biological fluorescent labeling. This intrinsic property of quantum dots can be utilized for sensitive detection of target analytes with high sensitivity; including pathogenic bacteria and cancer monitoring. The quantum dots and quantum dot doped silica nanoparticles exhibit prominent emission peaks when excited at 400 nm but on conjugation to model rabbit antigoat antibodies exhibit diminished intensity of emission peak at 600 nm. It shows that photoluminescence intensity of conjugated quantum dots and quantum dot doped silica nanoparticles could permit the detection of bioconjugation. Samples of conjugated and unconjugated quantum dots and quantum dot doped silica nanoparticles were subjected to enzyme linked immunosorbent assay for further confirmation of bioconjugation. In the present study ligand exchange, bioconjugation, fluorescence detection of bioconjugated quantum dots and quantum dot doped silica nanoparticles and further confirmation of bioconjugation by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay has been described.

Selective capturing and detection of Salmonella typhi on polycarbonate membrane using bioconjugated quantum dots.

Present work demonstrates the utilization of surface modified polycarbonate (PC) membrane as solid phase and antibody conjugated CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) as fluorescent label for the sensitive and selective detection of Salmonella typhi (S. typhi) in water in a period of 2.5h. PC membrane was surface modified with glycine and activated by EDC/NHS for immobilization of S. typhi specific IgG. Antibody immobilized porous PC membrane was incubated with bacteria contaminated water for immunocapturing of S. typhi. Antibody conjugated QDs were also prepared by using carbodiimide chemistry. Both modified PC membrane and quantum dots were characterized by using various modern analytical tools. It was estimated that 1.95 molecules of QDs were successfully bio-conjugated per unit of IgG. PC membrane with captured bacteria was incubated with prepared IgG conjugated QDs for the formation of sandwich complex. Analysis of the regions of interest (ROI) in fluorescent micrographs showed that newly developed method based on PC and fluorescent QDs has 100 times higher detection sensitivity (100 cells/mL) as compared with detection using conventional dye (FITC) based methods.

Detection of anti-tetanus toxoid antibody on modified polyacrylonitrile fibers.

Accurate determination of concentration of immunoglobulin (IgG) to tetanus toxoid is important in order to evaluate the immunogenicity of tetanus toxoid vaccines, immune competence in individual patients and to measure the prevalence of immunity in populations. Surface modified polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers were evaluated as a matrix to develop highly sensitive method for the detection of anti-tetanus antibody in a sandwich ELISA format. In the proposed method tetanus toxoid immobilized on modified PAN fibers was used to detect anti-tetanus antibody (raised in horse hence represented as horse anti-tetanus toxoid or HAT-Ab) with horse raddish peroxidase enzyme conjugated with Rabbit anti-Horse IgG (RAH-HRP) as the label within 2.5h. A sigmoidal pattern for the detection of different concentration of antibody ranging from 1.0 to 0.0001 IU mL(-1) was validated. The immunoassay recorded a very high sensitivity as concentration as low as 0.0005 IU mL(-1) of HAT-Ab was detected. The intra- and inter-assay precision for 3 parallel measurements of 0.01 and for 0.001 IU mL(-1) of antibody varied from 5.4% to 11% and 5.7% to 20% respectively. PAN fibers were also used to qualitatively access the presence of different level of anti-tetanus antibody spiked in human blood. Seroepidemiological studies to measure the immunity against tetanus were conducted with twenty-five human beings belonging to various age groups using modified PAN-ELISA. The sensitivity, specificity and the reproducibility of the developed immunoassay indicate the potential application of modified PAN fibers in the field of immunodiagnostics.

Surface modification of polyacrylonitrile fiber for immobilization of antibodies and detection of analyte.

Pendent nitrile groups of multifilamentous polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers were reduced to amino groups using lithium aluminum hydride for different time of reduction and amine content was estimated by performing acid-base titrations. Attenuated total reflection-fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) were used for the characterization of the generated amino groups and thermal properties of the reduced fibers, respectively. The surface morphology of the fibers after reduction and immobilization was characterized using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The newly formed amino groups of the fibers were activated by using glutaraldehyde for the covalent linking of Goat anti-Rabbit IgG-HRP (GAR-HRP) antibody enzyme conjugate. Modified PAN fibers were evaluated as a matrix for sandwich ELISA by using Goat anti-Rabbit antibody (GAR-IgG), Rabbit anti-Goat (RAG-IgG) as analyte and enzyme conjugate GAR-HRP. The fibers reduced for 24h were able to detect the analyte RAG-IgG at a concentration as low as 3.75ng mL(-1) with 12% skimmed milk as blocking reagent for the optimized concentration of primary antibody GAR-IgG 3microg mL(-1) and peroxidase conjugate GAR-HRP dilution of 8000 fold. The sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility of the developed immunoassay was further established with antibodies present in human blood using Rabbit anti-Human (RAH-IgG) antibody and the corresponding HRP enzyme conjugate. As low as 0.1microL of human blood was sufficient to perform the assay with the modified fibers.