E-Poster Presentation Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2021

The nanoscale topography of titanium surface influences Candida albicans’ cell rigidity (#235)

Phuc H. Le 1 2 , Duy H. K. Nguyen 1 , Arturo Aburto-Medina 1 2 , Denver P. Linklater 1 , Russell J. Crawford 1 , Shane Maclaughlin 3 , Elena P. Ivanova 1
  1. School of Science, College of Science, Engineering and Health, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
  2. Australian Research Council Research Hub for Australian Steel Manufacturing, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia
  3. BlueScope Steel Ltd, Port Kembla, NSW 2505, Australia

The contamination of medical surfaces due to the detrimental effects of microbial biofilm formation is considered an urgent challenge nowadays, especially on implantable materials. In this study, the attachment pattern and cell rigidity of the opportunistic pathogenic yeast, Candida albicans ATCC 10231, was investigated on surfaces with different nanoscale surface architecture, including non-polished titanium (npTi) (Sa 389.4 ± 52.2 ), polished titanium (pTi) (Sa 14.3± 5.8) and glass (Sa 2.0 ± 0.3). Moreover,  the surface topography of the studied surfaces to were characterized and the rigidity of C. albicans cells was measured during attachment via atomic force microscopy (AFM). The surface architecture of npTi and glass based on skewness and kurtosis values revealed a valleyed surface profile (Sskw ~1.0; Skur ~3.5), whereas pTi possessed a spiky surface profile (Sskw ~3.9; Skur ~16.2). After a 7-day incubation period, the attached cells on pTi (75 cells mm-2) were significantly lower than npTi (125 cells mm-2) and glass surfaces (175 cells mm-2). Furthermore, the rigidity of C. albicans cells attached on pTi was about 363.8 kPa, roughly a 2-fold  increase in rigidity compared to those on npTi (164.2 kPa) and glass (184.6 kPa) surfaces. This suggests that surfaces with a specific combination of surface topographical parameters could act as physical environmental stress, which impacts C. albicans cell attachment and rigidity during surface attachment. This study could benefit the design and development of antifungal surfaces to prevent fungal invasion in the clinical health sector.