Modelling Staphylococcus aureus biofilm on infected chronic wounds

Chronic wounds, for instance venous, pressure, arterial and diabetic ulcers, are a major health problem throughout the world. Compared with normal wounds, those that take more than four weeks to heal are defined as chronic. Interestingly, the numbers of patients suffering from chronic wounds and the cost for treatment have been increasing during the past two decades. There is increasing evidence that suggests that bacteria infect those chronic wounds and there exist as a biofilm, which affects the wound healing and success of wound treatment. The aim of this project is to develop a dynamic ex vivomodel to mimic Staphylococcus aureus biofilm on infected chronic wound using artificial wound fluid, 3D printing and porcine skin. This dynamic model also will be used to determine drug delivery from commercial antibiotic discs and poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) electrospun fibrous matrices. The results indicated that our new developed dynamic model was succeed with mimicking S. aureus biofilm on infected chronic wounds. Compared our flow system with traditional colony biofilm assay (CBA), it had generated an air-liquid-solid interface, which is more approach to real conditions. Meanwhile, drug delivery from PCL electrospun matrices had been tested with both CBA and flow system. The results provided further strong evidence on the benefaction of our new developed ex vivomodel. In summary, this new developed easily application model will be potentially significant on improving studying treatments of biofilms on infected chronic wounds.