Date Approved

9-19-2019

Embargo Period

9-23-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S. Pharmaceutical Sciences

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

College

College of Science & Mathematics

Advisor

Perez, Lark

Committee Member 1

Caputo, Gregory

Committee Member 2

Jonnalagadda, Subash

Keywords

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, biofilms, hospital-acquired infections

Subject(s)

Nanoparticles; Bacterial diseases

Disciplines

Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry | Nanomedicine

Abstract

Treating patients with antibiotics is becoming harder with the increase in antibiotic resistance. This is due to the widespread antibiotic use in clinical and agricultural settings. With antibiotic resistance outpacing new drugs making it to the market, developing new options to treat bacterial infections is and will be important. We created sugar modified nanoparticles to inhibit the biofilm formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

P. aeruginosa is a gram-negative opportunistic pathogen that infects its host that has a compromised immune system. This makes it one of the most significant bacterial infection in hospitals. P. aeruginosa uses biofilms as an attack mechanism on the host. These biofilms are regulated through quorum sensing. Lec-A is the galactose binding lectin in P. aeruginosa which was the lectin target for this project. By knowing the binding pocket of the Lec-A, a galactose-modified di-block co-polymer is assembled into nanoparticles.

In order to make the nanoparticles to work better, more galactose modified sugars are added to the co-polymer. This was done by using Lysine to attach two galactose modified sugars to. The polymer was assembled by adding polymer to Cyanuric Chloride (TCT) then two lysines doubled modified galactose sugars to the TCT giving a tetra-modified polymer which will then be assembled to a nanoparticle.

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