Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 4, 2026
Fabricating Superhydrophobic Polymeric Materials for Biomedical Applications
Published on: August 28, 2015
Antibiotic-loaded polypropylene surgical meshes with suitable biological behaviour by plasma functionalization and
C Labay1, J M Canal2, M Modic3
1Surfaces, Products and Textile Processes Research Group, Textile and Paper Engineering Dept., Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), C/ Colom, 1, 08222, Terrassa, Spain; Biomaterials, Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering Group, Materials Science and Metallurgy Dept., UPC, Av. Diagonal 647, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
Hernia repair is one of the most common operations in general surgery, and its associated complications typically relate to infections, among others. The loading of antibiotics to surgical meshes to deliver them locally in the abdominal hernia repair site can be one way to manage infections associated with surgical implants. However, the amount of drug loaded is restricted by the low wettability of polypropylene (PP). In this work, plasma has been used to tailor the surface properties of PP meshes to obtain high loading of ampicillin while conserving the desired biological properties of the unmodified samples and conferring them with antibacterial activity. It was demonstrated that the new surface chemistry and improved wettability led to 3-fold higher antibiotic loading. Subsequently, a PEG-like dry coating was deposited from tetraglyme with low-pressure plasma which allowed maintaining the high drug loading and kept cell properties such as chemotaxis, adhesion and morphology to the same levels as the untreated ones which have shown long-standing clinical success.
