(279f) Wireless Electrostimulation to Eradicate Bacteria Biofilm

Pathogenic bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus can form biofilms on medical implants and cause serious infections that are incurable by conventional antibiotics due to high-level drug resistance. As an alternative approach, electric currents have been shown to kill biofilm cells and have synergy with antibiotics in bacteria killing. However, conventional electrochemical treatment requires connection electrodes to a power source. This requires invasive procedures and can cause complications, hindering the application of this technology in vivo. In this study, we demonstrate that biofilm cells can be effectively killed by using electromagnetic induction to deliver direct current wirelessly from a remote power source. For example, after treatment with 60 µA/cm² of wirelessly delivered DC conducted by stainless steel electrodes for 6 hours, the viability of biofilm cells was reduced by approximately 4 logs and 2.2 logs for P. aeruginosa and S. aureus, respectively. Similarly, the viability of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus biofilm cells was reduced by 2 and 2.5 logs after treatment with the 30 µA/cm² of wirelessly delivered DC conducted by graphite-based electrodes for 3 hours, respectively. Synergy in concurrent treatment with lower level DC and antibiotics to biofilms was also observed. These conditions appeared to be safe to the human epithelial cells. Encouraged by these findings, we engineered a model that contains the wireless DC treatment units and shares similar profile of implantable medical devices. The device was found to effectively kill of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus biofilms without noticeable toxicity to human cells. With the capability to kill bacteria without using a directly connected power source, this platform has potential applications in engineering smart devices to non-invasively eradicate biofilm infections.