Worcester, Mass. – February 21, 2023 – Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher Jeannine Coburn has been awarded a $606,146 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a transparent wound dressing that was inspired by a natural biopolymer she observed while fermenting kombucha at home.
The prestigious CAREER Award recognizes early-career researchers and will support Coburn’s five-year project to expand fundamental knowledge about a stretchable and optically transparent cellulose produced by Komagataeibacter hansenii, a bacteria found in kombucha, vinegar, and other foods.
Coburn, assistant professor in WPI’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, will attach antimicrobial peptides to the cellulose to develop a material that can cover and treat a wound while remaining transparent so that health care workers can visually inspect a wound without exposing and disturbing vulnerable tissue.
“This project began in my kitchen years ago, when I opened a jar of kombucha that I had been making and discovered an optically clear membrane on top of the liquid,” said Coburn. “That observation led to research in my laboratory to better understand this material and its potential to improve human health.”
Coburn will determine the chemical composition and crystal structure of a transparent cellulose produced by K. hansenii, the genes present in the bacteria, and how feeding different carbon sources, or sugars, to the bacteria can alter its expression of genes. Coburn will also develop peptides that can be tethered to the cellulose to fight infections in wounds. One goal is to develop peptides that can disrupt biofilms, which are difficult-to-treat colonies of bacteria embedded within an extracellular matrix.
