The Future of 3D Printed Biofilms for In Vitro and In Vivo Wound Infection Models Editorial Summary
This paper provides an overview of the future of three dimensional printed biofilm for in vitro and in vivo wound infection models. Biofilm is an essential component of understanding the mechanism of stalling of wound healing. Biofilm removal remains a contentious area of wound care. Very few antimicrobial rinses and dressings on the market have been developed to target biofilms as there still remains to be an established ‘ideal’ assay to study mature biofilms in a high throughput screen that is reproducible. We describe a novel 3D printed biofilm model that can be utilized in vitro as well as in vivo.
Introduction
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hronic wounds are a significant financial burden ($25B) to our health care system.1-3 Chronic hard-to-heal wounds are also a significant burden to the quality of life (QoL) of the patients. One of the major risk factors associated with lower extremity amputations and patient mortality is infected wounds, that are often stalled in the inflammatory phase of wound healing.
Ms Mia Hanna
Ms Vanessa Vu
Project Manager/ Research Associate III, Alira Health
Research Associate I, Alira Health
Boston MA, United States
Boston MA, United States
Ms Lindsay Poland
Dr Mitchell Sanders
Scientist III, Lab Operations Manager, Alira Health
Chief Scientific Officer, Alira Health
Boston MA, United States
Boston MA, United States
Wound infections are resistant to antibiotics and antimicrobial therapies because the bacteria are deep in the wound bed in a polymicrobial biofilm with a dense layer of polysaccharides, proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids referred to as the exopolymeric substance, or EPS. The biofilm is resistant to mechanical shear, the microbes deep in the biofilm are senescent and are resistant to antibiotics. Although there are countless antimicrobial wound care rinses and dressings on the market, many have limited efficacy for removing biofilms because these antimicrobials and antibiotics were developed using minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) assays with planktonic bacteria, which are easier to kill compared to complex biofilms.4-7 In addition, very few of these products have been developed to target biofilms because there hasn’t been an ideal assay to study mature biofilms in a high throughput screen (HTS), that is reproducible and has a high signal to noise ratio. One of the best characterized ex vivo models to study biofilms was developed in Greg Schultz’s laboratory.8,9 This model system can generate mature biofilms that are more reflective of a hard to kill biofilm in a chronic wound, but the model system requires several replicates due to the high standard deviation. Although recent improvements in the sterilization of the explants with immersion in 70% ethanol followed by 10% bleach reduced this standard deviation to some extent, there is still quite a lot of variability from lot to lot of the porcine skin due to the potential contamination of the explants with B. subtilis spores. Here we report the development of the first of a kind 3D printed
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Wound Masterclass - Vol 1 - December 2022
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