Effect of Preparation Additives on the Antimicrobial Activity and Cytotoxicity of Polypyrrole

Abstract

The search for new biomaterials has increased continuously in recent years and, in this context, the application of polypyrrole (PPy) as a promising material for this function has been reported as a result of positive responses, such as bioactivity and biocompatibility. In this study, PPy was obtained through modifications/adaptations made in methodologies of previous papers, which focused mainly on conductive properties. The use of additives in the synthesis significantly improves the application in the biomedical area, which depends directly on a diversity of structural and morphological parameters. Here, physicochemical characterization was helpful to determine PPy structures and morphologies of the resulting samples. The addition of phytic acid (PA) and methyl orange (MO) directly influenced not only the particle morphology and size, but also the antibacterial activity and cytotoxicity. The results of antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli as well as the negligible cytotoxicity of PPy obtained here indicate a wide applicability of the materials in wound dressing and tissue engineering.

Coating of Leather with Dye-Containing Antibacterial and Conducting Polypyrrole

“…In addition to conductivity, these polymers display also antibacterial activity [6][7][8][9][10]. Five organic dyes differing in molecular structure have been selected for the present study (Figure 2) for their antibacterial effect reported in the literature: crystal violet (triphenylmethane dye) [14][15][16][17], neutral red (phenazine dye) [18,19], methyl orange (azo dye) [20], acriflavine (acridine dye) [21][22][23], and methylene blue (thiazine dye) [18,22,24].…”

“…Antibacterial activity has also been demonstrated in systems including conducting polymers, such as polyaniline [25][26][27] and polypyrrole [7][8][9]20,23,28]. In this case, however, such activity may also be caused by residual reactants, low-molecular-weight by-products, polypyrrole counter-ions (Figure 1), and any potential additives.…”