Upcycling Poly(ethylene terephthalate) Refuse to Advanced Therapeutics for the Treatment of Nosocomial and Mycobacterial Infections

作者：Jeremy P. K. Tan, Jason Tan, Nathanial Park, Kaijin Xu, Edward D. Chan, Chuan Yang, Victoria A. Piunova, Zhongkang Ji, Alexandra Lim, Jundan Shao, An Bai, Xiyuan Bai, Daniele Mantione, Haritz Sardón, Yi Yan Yang, James L. Hedrick · 发表于：Macromolecules · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1021/acs.macromol.9b01333 · 被引用次数：48 · 研究领域：Antimicrobial agents and applications、Antimicrobial Peptides and Activities、Biopolymer Synthesis and Applications

The discovery of antibiotics was one of the crowning achievements of the 20th century, revolutionizing the treatment of infectious disease. However, widespread improper use of antibiotics has led to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, resulting in a healthcare crisis and the urgent need to develop new effective antibiotics. Moreover, current antibiotic therapies are inefficient in treating biofilm-protected and intracellular organisms such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ) and non-tuberculous mycobacteria. Herein, we present a strategy for the construction of macromolecular antimicrobial compounds using a catalyst-free, polyaddition polymerization process of monomers derived from poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) refuse. The initial depolymerization of PET refuse via aminolysis is highly amenable and scalable process to access a broad array of functional tertiary amine-containing terephthalamide polymer-grade monomers. This new monomer platform was subsequently used to construct antimicrobial cationic polyionenes via a polyaddition polymerization. The composition and structure of the antimicrobial polyionenes were varied to study their antimicrobial activity against a broad spectrum of pathogenic microbes including Mtb . Polymers with optimized compositions have potent antimicrobial activity with low minimum inhibitory concentrations of 3.9–15.8 μg/mL against microbes including Mtb and high selectivity for microbes over mammalian cells. Similarly, activity ...