Antimicrobial anionic polymers: the effect of cations

• DOI: 10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2018.07.044
• Publication Date: 2018-07-26T16:30:47Z
• Authors: Yuanmei Qian; Hengqing Cui; Rongwei Shi; Jiangna Guo; Bin Wang; Yan Xu; Yingying Ding; Hailei Mao; Feng Yan
• Keywords: Cationic polymerization; Phosphonium

Abstract Development of antibacterial materials with broad spectrum activity has attracted extensive attention. Herein, anionic small molecule and their corresponding anionic polymers with various organic cations, including cyclized cations (imidazolium [Im] and piperidinium [Pi]), and linear cations (quaternary ammonium [Qa] and phosphonium [Ph]) were synthesized for the antibacterial applications. The effect of cationic structures on the antibacterial activities against both Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) were studied systematically by determination of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and molecular dynamics simulations (MDS). The antibacterial activities of the anionic small molecules against both S. aureus and E. coli are in the following order: phosphonium > imidazolium > piperidinium > quaternary ammonium. As for the anionic polymers, such a chemical cationic structure-antibacterial property relationship can also be applied to evaluate that of corresponding anionic polymers. Furthermore, the antibacterial activities of anionic polymers against S. aureus are higher than those of corresponding anionic small molecules. The synthesized anionic small molecules and anionic polymers exhibited good hemocompatibility toward human red blood, demonstrating clinical feasibility in topical applications.