Nanoparticle Approaches Against Bacterial Infections
Over the last few decades, the application of nanotechnology, particularly the use of nanoparticles for drug delivery, has generated significant impact in medicine. Various nanoparticle delivery platforms, especially liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, dendrimers, and inorganic nanoparticles, have received significant attention. Drug molecules loaded into nano-carriers through physical encapsulation, adsorption, or chemical conjugation exhibit an improved pharmacokinetic profile and therapeutic index when compared to their free drug counterparts. Other advantages of nanoparticle delivery systems, including improved drug solubility, prolonged systemic circulation, sustained and controlled release, precise drug targeting, and concurrent delivery of multiple drugs, have also been validated in various studies
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A number of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems have been approved for clinical use to treat a variety of infectious diseases, and many other antimicrobial nanoparticle formulations are currently under various stages of pre-clinical and clinical tests.Three studies were included in this report to support the effectiveness of nanoparticle-based drug delivery. The first study demonstrated the approach to selectively deliver antimicrobials to the sites of bacterial infections by utilizing bacterial toxins to activate drug release from gold nanoparticle-stabilized phospholipid liposomes. While the second and third study showed the effectiveness of PHsensitive drug release from liposomes in different sites.
