Puerarin@Chitosan composite for infected bone repair through mimicking the bio-functions of antimicrobial peptides

It is important to eliminate lipopolysaccharide (LPS) along with killing bacteria in periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) therapy for promoting bone repair due to its effect to regulate macrophages response. Although natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) offer a good solution, the unknown toxicity, high cost and exogenetic immune response hamper their applications in clinic. In this work, we fabricated a nanowire-like composite material, named [email protected] , by combining chitosan and puerarin via solid-phase reaction, which can finely mimic the bio-functions of AMPs. Chitosan, serving as the bacteria membrane puncture agent, and puerarin, serving as the LPS target agent, synergistically destroy the bacterial membrane structure and inhibit its recovery, thus endowing [email protected] with good antibacterial property. In addition, [email protected] possesses good osteoimmunomodulation due to its ability of LPS elimination and macrophage differentiation modulation. The in vivo results show that [email protected] can inhibit the LPS induced bone destruction in the Escherichia coli infected rat. [email protected] exhibits superior bone regeneration in Escherichia coli infected rat due to the comprehensive functions of its superior antibacterial property, and its ability of LPS elimination and immunomodulation. [email protected] can well mimic the functions of AMPs, which provides a novel and effective method for treating the PJI in clinic.