Self-assembled supramolecular hybrid hydrogel beads loaded with silver nanoparticles for antimicrobial application.

This paper reports the formation of silver (Ag) NPs within spatially-resolved two-component hydrogel beads that combine a low-molecular-weight gelator (LMWG) DBS-CONHNH 2 and a polymer gelator (PG) calcium alginate. The AgNPs are formed via in situ reduction of Ag(I), with the resulting nanoparticle-loaded gels being characterised in detail. We tested the antibacterial activity of the nanocomposite gel beads against two drug-resistant bacterial strains, often associated with hospital-acquired infections: vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA14), and the AgNP-loaded gels showed good antimicrobial properties against both types of bacteria. We suggest that the gel bead format of these AgNP-loaded hybrid hydrogels could make them promising versatile biocompatible materials for potential applications in orthopaedics or wound healing.