Targeted Depletion of Individual Pathogen by Bacteria-Templated Polymer

Selective and targeted removal of individual species or strains of bacteria from complex communities can be desirable over traditional and broadly acting antibiotics in several conditions. However, strategies that can detect and ablate bacteria with high specificity are emerging in recent years. Herein, a platform is reported that uses bacteria as a template to synthesize polymers containing guanidinium groups for self-selective depletion of specific pathogenic bacteria without disturbing microbial communities. Different from conventional antibiotics, repeated treatment of bacteria with the templated polymers does not evolve drug resistance mutants after 20 days of serial passaging. Especially, high in vivo therapeutic effectiveness of the templated polymers is achieved in E. coli- and P. aeruginosa-induced microbial peritonitis. The templated polymers have shown high selectivity in in vivo antimicrobial activity, which has excellent potential as systemic antimicrobials against bacterial infections. A platform that uses bacteria as a template to synthesize guanidinium-functionalized polymers through copper catalyzed ATRP is reported. The polymers recovered from the bacterial surface show high bactericidal activity against the strains that templated them and deplete the target bacteria efficiently without significant collateral damage to complex microbial communities as compared to antibiotics.image

Automated summary

This study reports a platform that uses bacteria as templates to synthesize polymers containing guanidinium groups, which can selectively remove pathogenic bacteria without significant damage to microbial communities.