AIMed's main aims

The materials developed by AIMed will eventually result in fewer surgical infections, faster recovery of patients, and greatly reduced post-operative healthcare costs. AIMed will develop novel peptide sequences and ways of binding them to the surfaces of polymers, ceramics and metals. A complementary approach will be the development of metal ion substituted calcium phosphate coatings which can be applied to implants by additive manufacturing techniques. The efficacy of these antibacterial surfaces will be further enhanced by laser processing of the material to make it unattractive to biofilms (by altering the roughness and wetting characteristics).

AIMed's objectives

• To create new antimicrobial metallic, polymeric and ceramic surfaces by the use of chemical and physical surface modification to allow functionalisation of surfaces with antimicrobial peptides, doping with metal ion antibacterial agents and patterning of surfaces at micro and nanoscale to study physical mechanisms underlying antimicrobial action.
• To create a novel antimicrobial peptide mimicking the antimicrobial core of human alpha- and beta- defensins to realise antibacterial structures and use of molecular biology techniques to identify the best possible sequences.
• To develop novel characterisation procedures and workflows for the efficient determination of the antimicrobial behaviour and biocompatibility of the new materials.
• To develop new standards for antimicrobial materials and processes.
• To disseminate the scientific and technological outcomes of AIMed to the broader research community.

Ruđer Bošković Institute is a lead beneficiary of this project with following research objectives: 

• To develop antimicrobial metal ion substituted CaPs (coatings and injectable)
• To optimise CaP coatings processing
• To identify current processing limitations and propose novel approaches