Effective and sustainable oral biofilm resistance and elimination by means of drug-deliverable chitosan-Sn2+-carboxymethyl starch nanocomposite gel.

Abstract

Oral bacterial biofilm is the primary etiological factors of many dental diseases such as dental caries. Though tropical drug delivery (TDD) can increase drug concentration on tooth surface and promote drug penetrate into biofilm, a TDD scaffold with biofilm targeting and sustainable drug release ability is still highly expected to increase its anti-biofilm performance. In this paper, a drug-deliverable nanocomposite gel was simply prepared via complex coacervation process using carboxymethyl starch (CMS), stannous fluoride (SnF2) and chitosan (CS). After careful tuning of carboxymethyl grafting ratio and precursor concentration, the optimized nanocomposite displayed a core-shell structure with uniform size (400-500 nm). Typical antibiotic minocycline hydrochloride (MH) was well encapsulated in the nanocomposite and exhibited controlled release behavior in a simulated oral condition. Such drug-deliverable nanocomposite gel successfully resisted the erosion of saliva and exhibited enhanced association with S. mutans biofilms following incorporation of CS into its outer layer. S. mutans biofilm no matter pre-formed on hydroxyapatite (HAP) or not could be sustainably eliminated by the nanocomposite and the antibacterial activity (efficacy >80%) remained effective for at least 72 h. Our findings may offer valuable insight into the development of sustained anti-biofilm systems for oral applications.

Abstract as supplied by the indexing source. © the authors / publisher.