Inactivation Strategies

With the application of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), surfaces can be endowed with a biocidal effect. For this purpose, non-toxic AMPs, of synthetic or natural origin, are immobilized on the respective materials. By using AMPs in medical devices, such as wound dressings, the use of antibiotics can be limited. The germ load is thus reduced without promoting the threat of resistance.

Services:

• Coupling of peptides to desired surface by affinity or covalent binding
• Coupling via "auxiliary matrices" on difficult substrates

The current bioburden caused by bacterial pathogens in the areas of human medicine and veterinary medicine, and at the transmission from animals to humans, and not least the multi-resistant pathogens now emerging, make new and effective measures necessary for both combating and diagnosing these germs.

Highly specific antigens from the corresponding species of pathogen, isolated from an infection-relevant transcriptome, provide a basis for this. Depending on the situation, this involves isolating mRNAs from the pathogens using microarrays, and characterizing their resulting expressions for immunological purposes. Only the genes which are actually active when an infection occurs or their transcription products in the form of mRNA are therefore used as a basis for the identification of antigens. The method is fast and effective, and only requires a few cleaning steps.

Furthermore, the developments allow new instruments for immunodiagnostics (for example, highly specific antibodies) and new potential for generating selective vaccines to be derived. The method can be applied to any germ, and has already been used for a range of different pathogens, such as salmonella, campylobacter, staphylococcus, klebsiella, neisseria, pseudomonas, streptococcus and clostridium.