Combinatorial Polyacrylamide Hydrogels for Preventing Biofouling on Implantable Biosensors

Biofouling on the surface of implanted medical devices severely hinders their functionality and drastically shortens their lifetime. Currently, poly(ethylene glycol) and zwitterionic polymers are considered “gold standards” for device coatings to reduce biofouling. To discover novel antibiofouling materials, we created a combinatorial library of polyacrylamide-based copolymer hydrogels and screened their ability to prevent fouling from serum and platelet-rich plasma in high-throughput. We found certain non-intuitive copolymer compositions exhibit superior antibiofouling properties than current gold-standard materials and employed machine learning to identify key molecular features underpinning their performance. For validation, we coated the surfaces of electrochemical biosensors with our hydrogels and evaluated their anti-biofouling performance and in rodent models. Our copolymer hydrogels preserved device function over multiple days and enabled continuous measurements of a small-molecule drug . The novel methodology we describe enables the discovery of anti-biofouling materials that can extend the lifetime of implanted devices.