Designer protein pseudo-capsids targeting intracellular bacteria

Abstract

The emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria stimulates the search for antimicrobial materials capable of addressing challenges conventional antibiotics fail to address. The ability to target intracellular bacteria remains one of the...

Single Cell Killing Kinetics Differentiate Phenotypic Bacterial Responses to Different Antibacterial Classes

“…Thus, these findings indicate that ampicillin and ciprofloxacin lyse actively growing cells, but at higher concentrations, these antibiotics cause death in nongrowing or slowly growing cells by membrane disruption. In marked contrast to these conventional antibiotics, Ψ-capsids readily penetrate cell membranes, while favoring attack on bacterial membranes at any concentration, causing the rapid disruption of bacterial membranes and drastic changes in the morphology of bacterial cells ( 43 , 63 ). Such a mechanism does not differentiate between growing and nongrowing cells, as was observed in this study.…”

Strategies for the eradication of intracellular bacterial pathogens

“…To date, many antibiotics have been used clinically to treat infections caused by intra-cellular bacteria; however, complete eradication of intracellular bacteria still faces numerous challenges. 5,[31][32][33] Herein, we discuss several major challenges in eradicating intracellular bacteria (Fig. 1).…”

An SI-traceable reference material for virus-like particles

“…The physical attributes of VLPs find use in diagnostics as contrast agents for tissue imaging and internal standards for virus detection in biopsies as well as in medicines manufacturing as in-process calibrators to validate the efficacy of viral clearance in downstream processes ( Chung et al., 2020 ; Johnson et al., 2017 ; Schwarz and Douglas, 2015 ). Traditional uses of VLPs such as vaccine platforms respond to new opportunities with the advent of RNA vaccines, exploring platforms capable of encapsulating RNA ( Ho et al., 2021 ; Biddlecome et al., 2019 ) while emerging antimicrobial VLPs address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance including the targeting of intracellular pathogens ( Kepiro et al., 2020 ; Rey et al., 2021 ).…”