Zhiwei Peng
  • about
  • publications
  • projects
  • teaching
  • people

Our work was featured on Caltech News and Scientific American

January 12, 2024

2024

“AI-Optimized Catheter Design Could Prevent Urinary Tract Infections without Drugs” by Joanna Thompson. Scientific American, January 12, 2024.

“Aided by AI, New Catheter Design Prevents Bacterial Infections” by Lori Dajose. Caltech News, January 05, 2024.

References

2024

  1. AI-aided geometric design of anti-infection catheters
    Tingtao Zhou, Xuan Wan, Daniel Zhengyu Huang, and 6 more authors
    Science Advances, Jan 2024
    Abs arXiv HTML PDF

    Bacteria can swim upstream in a narrow tube and pose a clinical threat of urinary tract infection to patients implanted with catheters. Coatings and structured surfaces have been proposed to repel bacteria, but no such approach thoroughly addresses the contamination problem in catheters. Here, on the basis of the physical mechanism of upstream swimming, we propose a novel geometric design, optimized by an artificial intelligence model. Using Escherichia coli, we demonstrate the anti-infection mechanism in microfluidic experiments and evaluate the effectiveness of the design in three-dimensionally printed prototype catheters under clinical flow rates. Our catheter design shows that one to two orders of magnitude improved suppression of bacterial contamination at the upstream end, potentially prolonging the in-dwelling time for catheter use and reducing the overall risk of catheter-associated urinary tract infection. A geometric design provides a simple solution for catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

© Copyright 2025 Zhiwei Peng. Powered by Jekyll with al-folio theme. Last updated: January 10, 2025.