Design and synthesis of new nanobiomaterials with antimicrobial properties

In this work, new nanostructured copper materials have been designed, synthetized and evaluated in order to produce a more efficient and sustainable copper bionanohybrid with catalytical and antimicrobial properties. Thus, conditions are sought where the most critical steps are reduced or minimized, such as the use of reducing agents or the cryogenization step. In addition, the new materials have been characterized through different techniques and their oxidative and reductive capacity has been evaluated, as well as their antimicrobial activity. We demonstrate that the addition of different quantities of reducing agent in the synthesis method generates copper bionanohybrids with different metallic species, nanoparticles sizes and morphologies (spherical, nanorod, nanowires structures) , and antimicrobial activity. The antimicrobial properties of the bionanohybrids were studied against two different strain of bacteria, Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis, through two different methods: by counting the CFU and via disk diffusion test, respectively. In both cases, Cu-PHOS-100%R, with the highest percentage of reducing agent, was the most efficient, achieving a MIC value against B. subtilis of 125 µg/mL and an E. coli percentage reduction of 95% in 4h. Notable results were also obtained with the bionanohybrids with lowest reduction percentages, such as Cu-PHOS-10%R, which showed a MIC of 250 µg/mL and a bacteria reduction of 82%.