Investigating antimicrobial surfaces with isothermal calorimetry

Webinar with Olivier Braissant, Ph.D., Senior Researcher at the University of Basel

What happens when cutting-edge calorimetry meets one of today’s biggest biomedical challenges—antimicrobial surfaces? That’s exactly what we explored in this webinar with Olivier Braissant from the University of Basel. Olivier shared insights from his research into how this powerful technique can monitor microbial activity on complex materials—everything from dental aligners to orthopedic implants.

Why Antimicrobial Surfaces Matter for preventing biofilm formation

In medical settings, contaminated implants or surfaces can lead to serious infections. While various antimicrobial coatings exist—such as silver-doped surfaces or essential oil-treated plastics—accurately measuring their efficacy has always been challenging. Traditional methods often fall short, especially with porous, irregular, or non-transparent materials. That’s where biocalorimetry offers a powerful advantage.

BIOCalorimetry: Measuring bacterial growth when other methods can't

Olivier presents how isothermal microcalorimetry allows researchers to measure microbial metabolism in real time—even in hard-to-study environments like inside solid materials or on rough surfaces. The method is non-destructive, high-throughput, sensitive to both growth and metabolic activity, and compatible with complex real-world materials like screws, coatings, and dental polymers. 

Examples of medical implant applications discussed in the webinar include:

• Orthopedic implants: Measuring the performance of silver and calcium hydroxide coatings—how effectively they delay microbial growth, even when traditional tests fail to show any activity.

•  Dental aligners: Evaluating essential oil-infused coatings and their effectiveness in limiting biofilm formation between brushing sessions.

•  Surface-bacteria interactions: A unique setup that mimics the real-life interface between antimicrobial surfaces and biological fluids, using solid agar to mimic tissues and biocalorimetry to track biofilm development.

Olivier also discusses the potential of biocalorimetry to distinguish between bactericidal and bacteriostatic effects, something rarely possible with standard methods.