Important progress has been made in the research of antibacterial titanium alloys containing copper

Medical metal materials have been widely used in orthopedics, dentistry, lumen stents and other clinical fields, such as cardiovascular stents, fracture fixation instruments, artificial joints, spinal correction, dental implants and so on. As China gradually enters an aging society, problems such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, osteoporotic fractures and tooth loss are increasing day by day. Metal medical devices used for the repair and replacement of human tissues and organs play an irreplaceable role. However, the bacterial infection caused by medical devices has become a long-standing pain point in clinical practice. Aiming at the important clinical problems of infection caused by metal implanted devices, the research teams of Yang Ke and Ren Ling of Institute of metals, Chinese Academy of Sciences put forward the innovative idea of developing antibacterial medical metals. Recently, the application research of antibacterial Ti Cu dental implants and antibacterial Ti6Al4V Cu fracture fixation instruments developed by the team in the fields of Stomatology and orthopedics has made important progress.

In view of the frequent occurrence of periodontitis around dental implants and other oral clinical problems, the team cooperated with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen Institute of advanced technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Department of Stomatology, northern theater General Hospital of the Chinese people's Liberation Army. Through high sugar diet and using beagle dogs' oral bacteria to build animal models, the team benchmarked the commercially available dengteng implants with high cost performance and large dosage, The anti infection mechanism of Ti Cu implant and its effect on oral microbiome were studied from the perspective of oral microecological balance by metagenomics technology for the first time. The results show that, compared with dengteng implant, Ti Cu implant can maintain the flora balance between anaerobic bacteria and aerobic bacteria around it, promote the normal aerobic respiratory and metabolic microenvironment of oral cavity, avoid the microenvironment tending to anaerobic and acidification, inhibit the reproduction of anaerobic acidogenic bacteria, and then inhibit the occurrence of periimplant inflammation. This result breaks the traditional concept of "antibacterial materials kill bacteria in animals". Relevant research results were published online in the Journal of bioactive materials on June 16.

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is a common and highly toxic bacterium in orthopedics, which is very easy to cause bacterial infection of orthopedic implanted medical devices. MRSA has been listed as a major threat to public health by the World Health Organization. In view of the above orthopedic clinical problems, the team cooperated with the team of academician Dai kirong of orthopedics department of the Ninth People's Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University to study the anti MRSA infection effect of antibacterial Ti6Al4V Cu bone needle in animals. The results show that Ti6Al4V Cu bone needle can effectively inhibit the occurrence of MRSA infection in bone, while Ti6Al4V bone needle implantation has serious clinical infection phenomena such as swelling of bone tissue, inflammatory tissue and adhesion of a large number of bacteria on the surface. The study of anti infection mechanism showed that Ti6Al4V Cu inhibited the occurrence of implant infection by inhibiting the formation of bacterial biofilm and the expression of adhesion related genes. The results were published in the journal Acta biomaterialia.