AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Bone cements are used in orthopaedics mainly as fixation devices in hip joints. One of the most important bone cements is Hydroxyapatite (HA) cement. It is widely used due to its advantages that include biocompatibility, bioactivity and low setting temperatures. HA cements can absorb bacteria leading to infection during surgery. In order to solve this problem, antimicrobial hydroxyapatite bone cements need to be developed. Antimicrobial peptides (APs) are low molecular weight natural compounds. APs with a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity act as the first line of defence against bacterial invasion in almost all forms of life. Human defensins represent one type of the most important antimicrobial peptides. The main advantage of human defensins is that they can avoid bacterial resistance which is a significant problem when antibiotics are used. However, the sequence of human defensins is very long and therefore very difficult to synthesise high purity antimicrobial peptides. If synthetic defensins with a short peptide sequence can still exhibit antimicrobial properties, synthetic defensins could be used. This work focuses on isolating fragments from the antimicrobial core of human defensins that can have significant antimicrobial properties and incorporating them in HA cements in order to make antimicrobial bone cements.