Antibacterial Activity of Metal Nanoparticles in an Ex Vivo Wound Infection Model

The objective of this work was to study the antibacterial effect of metal nanoparticles applied by laser-induced forward transfer on a wound infection model using pig skin. Nanoparticles were applied by laser-induced forward transfer using a nanosecond laser. The effect of nanoparticles was studied on five bacterial strains. Scanning electron microscopy was used to visualize the treated areas of pig skin. Biofilm formation is considered one of the main complications of the treatment of wound infections and it is associated with the transition of wounds to a chronic non-healing state. We have presented a fundamentally new method of direct laser-induced nanoparticle transfer, which allows the infected surface to be treated with “fresh nanoparticles” obtained directly during transfer from a metal plate (silver, copper, zinc). An ex vivo model of wound infection using pig skin was obtained, which showed excellent reproducibility between repeats. The high antimicrobial potential of this method was shown on a model of a wound infected with clinically significant bacteria: Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.