PDRN Bio-Coating

Dual anti-fouling + tissue-regeneration coating for sutures and intramuscular EMG

My role

I ran the EMG recordings and the chemical analysis, and wrote the manuscript. Coating development and the in vivo surgery were done with collaborators.

Motivation

Implantable bio-interfaces face two competing demands: suppress fouling (fibrotic encapsulation, biofilm) and promote tissue regeneration (vascularization, healing). Most coatings address one or the other.

Approach

A two-layer coating combining:

  1. PDRN (polydeoxyribonucleotide) — clinical-grade tissue-regeneration moiety
  2. Lubricant overlayer — slip-surface chemistry that physically rejects protein and cellular fouling
Electrode–tissue interface after 30 days, as fold change from day 0. The bare electrode degrades on every impedance metric while the coated one stays near unity. This is a single explanted pair, so it shows the direction of the effect rather than its distribution — the group sizes needed to call it are the point of the ongoing study.

Applications under study

  • Surgical sutures (chest closure) — accelerate wound healing while preventing biofilm formation
  • Intramuscular EMG electrodes (biceps) — reduce fibrotic encapsulation that degrades signal over weeks

Comparison design

Three-arm in vivo study: Bare vs. PDRN-only vs. PDRN + Lubricant, quantified by fluorescence imaging and per-channel EMG SNR over time.