Anti-adhesive activity of some secondary metabolites against Staphylococcus aureus on 3D printing medical materials

Recent improvements in 3D printing technology have increased the usage of 3D printed materials in several area. An exciting and emerging area of applying these next-generation manufacturing strategies is in the development of devices for biomedical applications. The main aim of this work was to investigate the effect of tannic acid, gallic acid and epicatechin gallate on the physicochemical characteristics of Acrylonitrile Butadiene-Styrene (ABS) and Nylon 3D printing materials. The results of the contact angle measurements showed a significant change in the physicochemical properties of both surfaces, indicated an increase in electron donor character of 3D printing materials following treatment. Thus, the ABS surfaces treated with tannic acid, gallic acid and epicatechin gallate have become more electron donating. Furthermore, the adhesion of Staphylococcus aureus on untreated and treated materials was evaluated by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis and the images were treated by MATLAB software. Our results proved the ability of S. aureus to adhere on all materials with a percentage of 77.86% for ABS and 91.62% for Nylon. The SEM has shown that all actives molecules were sufficient to obtain better inhibition of bacterial adhesion, which tannic acid has showed a total inhibition of S. aureus on ABS.