International Institute "Solution Chemistry of Advanced Materials and Technologies", ITMO University, 191002 Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Institute of Physical and Organic Chemistry, Southern Federal University, 344090 Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
ACS Nano. 2023 Nov 14;17(21):20925-20938. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.2c10127. Epub 2023 Oct 23.
Catheter-related biofilm infection remains the main problem for millions of people annually, affecting morbidity, mortality, and quality of life. Despite the recent advances in the prevention of biofilm formation, alternative methods for biofilm prevention or eradication still should be found to avoid traumatic and expensive removal or catheter replacement. Soft magnetic robots have drawn significant interest in favor of remote control, fast response, and wide space for design. In this work, we demonstrated magnetic soft robots as a minimally invasive, safe, and effective approach to eliminate biofilm from urethral catheters (20 Fr or 5.1 mm in diameter). Seven designs of the robot were fabricated (size 4.5 × 15 mm), characterized, and tested in the presence of a rotating magnetic field. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrated the superior efficiency of biofilm removal on the model of a urethral catheter using a magnetic robot, reaching full eradication for the octagram-shaped robot (velocity 2.88 ± 0.6 mm/s) at a 15 Hz frequency and a 10 mT amplitude. These findings are helpful for the treatment of biofilm-associated catheter contamination, which allows an increase in the catheter wearing time without frequent replacement and treatment of catheter-associated infections.
导管相关生物膜感染仍然是每年数百万人面临的主要问题，影响发病率、死亡率和生活质量。尽管最近在预防生物膜形成方面取得了进展，但仍应寻找预防或清除生物膜的替代方法，以避免创伤性和昂贵的移除或更换导管。软磁性机器人因其远程控制、快速响应和广泛的设计空间而引起了极大的关注。在这项工作中，我们展示了磁性软机器人作为一种微创、安全且有效的方法，可从尿道导管（直径 20Fr 或 5.1mm）中消除生物膜。我们制作了七种机器人设计（尺寸为 4.5×15mm），并在旋转磁场存在的情况下对其进行了表征和测试。作为概念验证，我们使用磁性机器人在尿道导管模型上展示了生物膜去除的卓越效率，在 15Hz 频率和 10mT 振幅下，八角形机器人的去除率达到 100%（速度为 2.88±0.6mm/s）。这些发现有助于治疗与生物膜相关的导管污染，从而可以延长导管的佩戴时间，而无需频繁更换和治疗导管相关感染。
