Supports of ceramic mixture for acelerated growth of Mycobacterium smegmatis

Abstract

Mycobacterium smegmatis (Ms), with its short generation time and low biosafety requirements, serves as an appropriate model to study Mycobacteria in general and is useful for assays of anti-tuberculosis agents. Recently, ceramic materials have been used in biomedical applications as a substrate. The aim of this work was to evaluate the ability of growth by Ms over supports prepared with a ceramic mixture. The supports were synthetized from hydroxyapatite (HA) and In2TiO5. SEM, EDS and XRD were used for analyze its final chemical composition. The increase of the oxygen concentration it is attributed to photocatalytic effect promoted by the sunlight exposure of supports immersed on MDB 7H9. The ceramic mixture, was responsible of the oxygen increase and, consequently, of the increase of eight times on the minimal inhibitory concentration in rezasurine assays on microplate. The use of the ceramic support showed the Ms growth 24 h before respect to the control without support.