Antimicrobial nanohybrids
The Russian development will significantly reduce the use of antibiotics
Nanoparticles for the precise delivery of antibiotics to the focus of infection were created by NUST MISIS scientists. According to them, the use of such nanomaterials makes it possible to reduce the dose of an antibiotic in some cases by 6-7 times, thereby reducing both the load on the body and the rate of adaptation of pathogens to drugs. The results are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials Interfaces (Gudz et al., Ag-Doped and Antibiotic-Loaded Hexagonal Boron Nitride Nanoparticles as Promising Carriers to Fight Different Pathogens).
According to scientists, the consumption of antibiotics is growing all over the world, which is associated with an increase in the morbidity of the population, the emergence of new infections and unregulated consumption of over-the-counter medications. The constant use of antibiotics provokes the development of resistance to them in microbes – today, most traditional antibiotics are powerless against many bacterial pathogens, experts noted.
However, it takes 10-20 years of research and clinical trials to obtain a new antibiotic, and drug therapy, according to scientists, still remains the main method of fighting infections.
One of the ways to solve the problem is antimicrobial nanohybrids, which help to overcome the resistance of pathogens to drugs without side effects for the patient. The main advantage of such drugs, according to scientists, is a serious reduction in the dose of the antibiotic, which reduces the load on the body and slows down the development of resistance in microbes.
Nanoparticles designed for targeted delivery of an antibiotic to the focus of infection were developed by NUST MISIS scientists together with colleagues from the State Scientific Center for Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology and the Institute of Biochemistry named after Bach. According to them, a new nanohybrid based on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) with silver particles showed high bactericidal and antifungal activity.
"H-BN nanoparticles with a size of 100 nm are obtained by chemical deposition from the gas phase, then silver particles are deposited on them by ultraviolet decomposition of silver nitrate. The nanoparticle cavities are saturated with antibiotics, which, after the drug is administered, gradually enter the body within nine days," said Kristina Gudz, one of the authors of the study, an engineer at the Inorganic Nanomaterials laboratory at NUST MISIS.
The new nanohybrids, as the researchers emphasized, are capable of destroying bacterial and fungal populations using much less active substance than existing antibiotics on the market. In some cases, this difference reaches 6-7 times. For example, the minimum concentration of gentamicin against the E.Coli U-122 strain is 256 mg/l, whereas a nanohybrid with the same drug achieves a similar effect at 40 mg/l.
"The use of silver particles makes it possible to achieve an additional bactericidal effect. Nanoparticles loaded with gentamicin showed efficacy against 38 types of strains of E. coli bacteria, and after planting silver particles on their surface, this number increased to 47," Gudz noted.
In addition, the resulting nanoparticles can, according to scientists, carry an increased "load" of antibiotics and easily penetrate into tissues from the circulatory system and back, ensuring continuous delivery of drugs to the source of infection. The drugs, according to scientists, have passed laboratory tests on more than 50 bacterial and fungal cultures.
Currently, the research team continues preclinical testing of new nanohybrids. The study is conducted within the framework of the RNF project No. 20-19-00120.
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