The contact of blood with artificial materials generally leads to immediate protein adsorption (fouling), which mediates subsequent biological processes such as platelet adhesion and activation leading to thrombosis. Recent progress in the preparation of surfaces able to prevent protein fouling offers a potential avenue to mitigate this undesirable effect. In the present contribution, we have prepared several types of state-of-the-art antifouling polymer brushes on polycarbonate plastic substrate, and investigated their ability to prevent platelet adhesion and thrombus formation under dynamic flow conditions using human blood. Moreover, we compared the ability of such brushes--grafted on quartz via an adlayer analogous to that used on polycarbonate--to prevent protein adsorption from human blood plasma, assessed for the first time by means of an ultrahigh frequency acoustic wave sensor. Results show that the prevention of such a phenomenon constitutes one promising route toward enhanced resistance to thrombus formation, and suggest that antifouling polymer brushes could be of service in biomedical applications requiring extensive blood-material surface contact.

Department of Chemistry and Physics of Surfaces and Biointerfaces Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic v v i Heyrovsky Square 2 162 06 Prague Czech Republic

Department of Chemistry St George Campus University of Toronto 80 St George Street Toronto Ontario Canada M5S 3H6

DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials and Institute of Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry RWTH Aachen University Forckenbeckstraße 50 52074 Aachen Germany

Econous Systems Inc 80 St George Street Toronto Ontario Canada M5S 3H6

Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering 164 College Street University of Toronto Toronto Ontario Canada M5S 3G9

References provided by Crossref.org

Surface Design of Antifouling Vascular Constructs Bearing Biofunctional Peptides for Tissue Regeneration Applications