Jeannine Coburn
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Wound dressings work best when they keep a wound moist, ease pain and prevent infection. A good dressing would also let clinicians see the wound underneath.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Materials Science
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
biomaterials
bacterial cellulose
exopolysaccharides
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Generate optically transparent insoluble exopolysaccharides from Komagataeibacter bacteria and characterize them from the molecular to the bulk scale for use as see-through wound dressings.
- Connect Komagataeibacter genotype to material phenotype, revealing how the bacteria's production machinery shapes exopolysaccharide properties.
- Characterize how antimicrobial peptides bind non-covalently to bacterial exopolysaccharides, how they are released, and whether they remain active against bacteria for infection prevention.
More about the research
The bacteria that make vinegar and kombucha, Komagataeibacter species, produce a promising material for this job: insoluble exopolysaccharides (EPSs), sugar-based polymers the bacteria secrete. Such materials have been proposed to relieve pain right away, hold a lot of water and speed healing. But scientists know little about how the bacteria make them or how to tune their properties.
Why it matters
Wound infections and slow healing are common problems in patient care. Transparent, bacteria-made dressings that carry antimicrobial peptides could let clinicians check wounds without removing the dressing while helping prevent infection. Understanding how bacterial genes control material properties could also make it easier to tailor natural biomaterials for other medical uses.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mohamadmahdi Samandari
Old Dominion University, VA·Biomedical Engineering
Characterize microneedle-like gelatin drug depots that are printed directly inside a defect, and measure how quickly they release drugs in laboratory experiments.
He Dong
University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Chemistry
Establish acid-activated self-assembling antimicrobial nanofibers (AA-SAANs) from new pH-responsive multidomain peptides containing non-natural charged amino acids, to tune their stability and activity.
Albert Siryaporn
University of California-Irvine, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify combinations of human histones with the antimicrobial peptide LL-37 and other membrane- or cell wall-targeting antimicrobials that produce the strongest killing and synergy against Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and communities of skin bacteria in vitro.
The school
Worcester Polytechnic Institute: 6 labs on PI Pages, $72M a year on research, 69 research doctorates a year.
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