Copper ions speed human tissue regeneration

An international group of scientists led by a team from Moscow’s MISiS University has developed special copper-coated nanostructured fibrous material that is believed to be able to rapidly release copper ions in a liquid environment.

The novel material apparently has huge potential as medical wound dressings as it has been proven to be a promising bacterium killer while also speeding up human tissue regeneration and triggering immunity cells activation.

Copper’s antibacterial properties have been known for ages. However, obtaining copper-coated nanofiber has proven a daunting task with a large number of chemical conversion stages and, therefore, prohibitive costs.

In this project, the research team is said to have successfully pioneered copper deposition onto temperature-sensitive polymer fiber by magnetron sputtering. According to the experimenters, the large-scale modeling of polycaprolactone (PCL) films irradiation by molecular dynamics simulation was performed “for the first time”, which made it possible to predict the ions penetration depth and tune the deposition conditions.

The team found that rapid release of copper ions in liquid media “led to significant suppression of E. coli and S. aureus germ colonies”.

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