Synthesis of Antimicrobial Poly(guanylurea)s

Bacterial infections are serious health threats. Emerging drug resistance in bacteria further poses serious challenges to the treatment options involving traditional antibiotics. Antimicrobial polymers disrupt the physical cell membrane integrity of bacteria to address the drug resistance problems. Here, we introduce a conceptually new class of antimicrobial polymers containing positively charged guanylurea backbones for enhanced antimicrobial effects. The initial structure–activity relationship studies demonstrate that poly(guanylurea piperazine)s (PGU-Ps) exhibit excellent antimicrobial activity against different types of bacteria with high selectivity. The new design concept of using a positively charged guanylurea backbone will contribute to the development of future biocompatible, specific, and selective antimicrobial polymers.