Ceftriaxone Mediated Synthesized Gold Nanoparticles: A Nano-Therapeutic Tool to Target Bacterial Resistance

Abstract

Ceftriaxone has been a part of therapeutic regime for combating some of the most aggressive bacterial infections in the last few decades. However, increasing bacterial resistance towards ceftriaxone and other third generation cephalosporin antibiotics has raised serious clinical concerns especially due to their misuse in the COVID-19 era. Advancement in nanotechnology has converted nano-therapeutic vision into a plausible reality with better targeting and reduced drug consumption. Thus, in the present study, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) were synthesized by using ceftriaxone antibiotic that acts as a reducing as well as capping agent. Ceftriaxone-loaded GNPs (CGNPs) were initially characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, DLS, Zeta potential, Electron microscopy and FT-IR. However, a TEM micrograph showed a uniform size of 21 ± 1 nm for the synthesized CGNPs. Further, both (CGNPs) and pure ceftriaxone were examined for their efficacy against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella abony and Klebsiella pneumoniae. CGNPs showed MIC50 as 1.39, 1.6, 1.1 and 0.9 µg/mL against E. coli, S. aureus, S. abony and K. pneumoniae, respectively. Interestingly, CGNPs showed two times better efficacy when compared with pure ceftriaxone against the tested bacterial strains. Restoring the potential of unresponsive or less efficient ceftriaxone via gold nanoformulations is the most alluring concept of the whole study. Moreover, applicability of the findings from bench to bedside needs further validation.

Enhancement of Vancomycin Potential against Pathogenic Bacterial Strains via Gold Nano-Formulations: A Nano-Antibiotic Approach

“…Whereas the MICs of ceftriaxone-GNPs against E. coli, S. aureus, and K. pneumoniae were calculated as 1.39, 1.6, and 0.9 µg/mL, respectively [18]. Importantly, all the antibioticloaded GNPs [21,29,30] showed better potential than pure antibiotic, which is in agreement with our findings.…”

“…The hypothesis on the mechanistic aspects of the antibacterial potential enhancement of vancomycin loaded onto V-GNPs is in line with the earlier findings in [21,30,48]. Firstly, the effective delivered concentration of vancomycin was elevated due to attachment to the surface of GNPs.…”

“…Importantly, the surface exposure of antibiotic (vancomycin) when linked to GNPs might have retained its antibacterial action [24]. This is in line with previous findings that ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, and ampicillin retain efficacy following conjugation to GNPs [21,29,30]. Cefotaxime-GNPs showed MIC values of 1.009 and 2.018 mg/L against drug-resistant E. coli and K. pneumonia, respectively [30].…”

“…Nevertheless, no new additional peaks were observed in the fingerprint region of the spectrum of the V-GNPs, demonstrating the presence of vancomycin in V-GNPs which, in turn, confirmed the efficient loading of vancomycin onto the surface of GNPs. Recently, a similar FTIR approach for the characterization of ceftriaxone-loaded GNPs was used by Alshammari et al [21].…”

“…Recently, a mounting body of literature has emphasized the feasibility of utilizing GNPs as carriers for antimicrobial agents [19][20][21][22]. GNPs efficiently enable the delivery of relatively higher drug concentrations at the site of infection while, simultaneously, minimizing the drug's toxicity [23].…”