Abstract
Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) is the most widely used material for the production of medical devices such as intravenous fluid bags
and tubing, enteral feeding, dialysis equipment and catheters. Despite of their numerous advantages, the plastic medical devices
are non biodegradable and prone to microbial colonization causing biofilm associated infections which are difficult to treat and
tend to chronicisation. A possible solution to surpass these limitations could be the fabrication of new biodegradable polymeric
materials with optimized biocompatibility and antimicrobial properties. In this regard, biodegradable polymeric materials, such as
poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), poly(DL-lactic acid) (PLA) etc. have been considered the most desirable solution from the
environment management point of view. In this paper, Alg(1%)Zn, Alg(2%)Zn, Alg(3%)Zn compounds were obtained from
sodium alginate (AlgNa) crosslinked with ZnCl2. Antimicrobial activity of the AlgZn compounds was assessed by the
microdilutions and the diffusion methods, towards Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains (reference and clinical
isolates). The Alg(3%)Zn compound was selected as antimicrobial agent to obtain the biocomposites encoded:
PLA/PCL/AlgZn0.1 and PLA/PCL/AlgZn0.3. The PLA/PCL sample was used as control. Antibiofilm activity against
Staphylococcus xylosus, cytotoxic effect on mammalian cells and thermal analysis by DSC were investigated for the obtained
biocomposites. The obtained results show that the addition of the Alg(3%)Zn compound in the biocomposites decreased the glass
transition temperature as well as the degree of crystallinity both of the PCL and PLA components in samples. Although the
results suggest that the biocomposites containing Alg(3%)Zn did not inhibit the staphylococcal colonization and mature biofilm
formation, the high degree of biocompatibility of blends leads to conclusion that these materials could be used for the
development of novel bioactive and biodegradable polymeric materials with medical applications