The world’s population is ageing and the need for biocompatible materials, which can be used for replacing defective bodyparts, is increasing. Metal is widely used and is an effective material to support various tissue. Though, a downside is that the metallic implants tend to be breeding grounds for bacterial infections.

In fighting these infections systemic antibiotics for implanted patients has proven less successful and another approach to fight the microbes locally could be to use ‘enzyme-prodrug-therapy’ (EPT). Prodrugs are pharmacologically inactive medications, that are metabolized into an active form within the body.

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Glucoronides are prodrugs which demonstrate antibacterial effects upon activation by breakage of a certain chemical bond connecting carbohydrates to the rest of the substance (glycosidic linkage). The research team behind the study has in fact discovered that metallic implants has the ability to break glycosidic linkages. Moreover, the metallic implants efficiently converted prodrugs into anti‐inflammatory and antibacterial agents.

Thereby, the implant itself has shown to mediate EPT-like localized synthesis of drug molecules and their findings establish novel opportunities in biomedical engineering, specifically in the context of implantable biomaterials.

This work was supported financially by the Aarhus University Research Foundation and the European Research Council.

Read about the study in Chemical Communications: Innate glycosidic activity in metallic implants for localized synthesis of antibacterial drugs. 

For further information, please contact

Associate Professor Alexander Zelikin 
Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center and Department of Chemistry 
zelikin@inano.au.dk – + 23297986 -