Problem Statement and Background
Background:
The fungal species Candida tropicalis is a common human pathogen that mainly effects immunocompromised patients. While often found in various soil and water environments, this pathogen can spread in healthcare settings and causes bloodstream infections that can lead to mortality rates up to 55-60%. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers this pathogen to be extremely high-risk due to high mortality rates and drug resistance. This increasing drug resistance stems from improper usage of antimicrobial treatments, creating an urgent clinical need for a new product or technology which will improve wound microenvironment care. Current oral medications and topical creams are typically expensive, require longevity of use, and can have unwanted side effects. Wound dressings on the market generally do not have antimicrobial characteristics and are not biodegradable or durable. This furthers the need for a novel protective wound product.
Problem Statement:
In laboratory and medical settings, protection against infectious fungi is essential for human health. Protective textiles, wound coatings, and dressings are at risk of microbial contamination due to the environments in which they are used. To combat infection, our team aims to design a hybrid antifungal material by integrating kombucha-derived bacterial cellulose with engineered curli nanofibers. Bacterial cellulose is the ideal biological scaffold for the material due to its large-scale production potential, biodegradability, and ease of integration with antimicrobial fibers, compared to traditional textile wound dressing material. The resultant material will be biocompatible, durable, and will eliminate contamination.
Our Goal:
Develop an antifungal, biocompatible material that can be utilized as a wound dressing to combat the effects of Candida Tropicalis, a highly infectious fungal species, in medical settings.
Objectives:
Investigate other or previous solutions for antimicrobial wound dressings to compare and evaluate the effectiveness or potential pitfalls of our proposed solution.
Successfully engineer E. coli as a host organism to grow curli nanofibers with specific anti-fungal properties.
Integrate the nanofibers into the bacteria cellulose and test for anti-microbial properties to produce the final deliverable wound dressing.