Public awareness of infectious diseases has increased in recent months, not only due to the current COVID-19 outbreak but also because of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) being declared a top-10 global health threat by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019. These global issues have spiked the realization that new and more efficient methods and approaches are urgently required to efficiently combat and overcome the failures in the diagnosis and therapy of infectious disease. This holds true not only for current diseases, but we should also have enough readiness to fight the unforeseen diseases so as to avoid future pandemics. A paradigm shift is needed, not only in infection treatment, but also diagnostic practices, to overcome the potential failures associated with early diagnosis stages, leading to unnecessary and inefficient treatments, while simultaneously promoting AMR. With the development of nanotechnology, nanomaterials fabricated as multifunctional nano-platforms for antibacterial therapeutics, diagnostics, or both (known as “theranostics”) have attracted increasing attention. In the research field of nanomedicine, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) with a tailored structure, large surface area, high loading capacity, abundant chemical versatility, and acceptable biocompatibility, have shown great potential to integrate the desired functions for diagnosis of bacterial infections. The focus of this review is to present the advances in mesoporous materials in the form of nanoparticles (NPs) or composites that can easily and flexibly accommodate dual or multifunctional capabilities of separation, identification and tracking performed during the diagnosis of infectious diseases together with the inspiring NP designs in diagnosis of bacterial infections.
The recalcitrant nature of biofilms makes biofilm‐associated infections difficult to treat in modern medicine. Biofilms have a high vulnerability to antibiotics and a limited repertoire of antibiotics could act on matured biofilms. This issue has resulted in a gradual paradigm shift in drug discovery and therapy, with anti‐biofilm compounds being sought alongside new drug carriers. A potential solution to biofilm‐associated infections is to employ antibiofilm treatments, which can attack biofilms from many fronts. Nanocarriers are promising in this regard because they can be entrapped within biofilm matrix, target biofilm matrix, and provide local drug delivery to inhibit biofilm formation. In this study, curcumin as an herbal extract was loaded onto hyperbranched polyethylenimine‐grafted mesoporous silica nanoparticles (F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur) and antibiofilm investigations were performed. The F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur design has the potential to repurpose curcumin as an antibiofilm agent by increasing its solubility and lowering the required doses for the destruction of matured biofilms as well as suppressing biofilm development. Using imaging and spectroscopic techniques, we assessed the interaction of F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur with Staphylococcus aureus bacterial cells and determined the impact of F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur on eradicating matured biofilms and suppressing biofilm development. The F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur design is highly cytocompatible, as observed by the cytotoxicity screening investigations on L929 mouse fibroblast cell line. Our findings show that F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur design reduces the bacterial cell viability, inhibits biofilm formation, and induces biofilm eradication, which is attributed to F‐MSN‐PEI/Cur design having the potential to repurpose the antibiofilm activity of curcumin‐herbal extract.
Background: Despite great hopes for small interfering RNA (siRNA)-based gene therapies, restrictions, including the presence of nucleases, reticuloendothelial system and undesired electrostatic interactions between nucleic acids and the cell membrane, limit the success of these approaches. In the last few decades, non-viral nucleic acid delivery vectors in nano size with high biocompatibility, low toxicity and proton sponge effect have emerged as magic bullets to overcome these drawbacks. Objective: This study aimed to develop poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (pHEMA)-chitosan nanoparticles (PCNp), and to transfect green fluorescent protein (GFP)-silencing siRNA (GsiR) in vitro. Method: First, PCNp displaying core-shell structure was synthesized and thereafter GsiR was encapsulated into the core of PCNp. The synthesized PCNp with/without GsiR were characterized using ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis)-spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermal decomposition, atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), zeta potential and dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements. Encapsulation of siRNA into the pHEMA core coated with chitosan shell was demonstrated using fluorescence and FTIR spectroscopy. Results: The surface charge of PCNSs and PCNSs-GsiR were found to be +39.5 and +40.2, respectively. In DLS analysis, an insignificant shift in the Z-average diameter of PCNp was observed from 109 nm to 133 nm using encapsulation of GsiR. In comparison to other studied nanomaterials and a commercial transfection reagent, our findings suggest a promising GFP-silencing effect of 45%. Conclusion: To our knowledge, we have obtained comparable silencing activity with the other studied equivalents despite using the lowest concentration of siRNA in existing literature.
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