Nanoparticulate Platforms for Targeting Bone Infections: Meeting a Major Therapeutic Challenge

Abstract

Bone infections are devastating complications in orthopedics due to biofilm formation. Treatment requires high antibiotic doses, which may lead to systemic toxicity thus limiting the drug therapeutic effectiveness. In this context, nanoparticles are well-known controlled release drug carriers that are able to modulate release rate, versatile in terms of administration routes and may be used as local delivery systems. Regarding bone infections, although nanoparticles are a promising strategy for overcoming biofilm tolerance, there are clearly technical, safety, regulatory and clinical challenges that need to be overcome before such nanomedicines may be translated into clinical use. In this paper, we present a critical overview on the high expectations against the real potential of the nanotechnological approaches to bone infection treatment.

Pre-Assembly of Near-Infrared Fluorescent Multivalent Molecular Probes for Biological Imaging

“…Our results imply that in vivo targeting of multivalent probes to bone can be fine-tuned by altering the number of iminodiacetate groups. Inspection of the bone imaging literature indicates increasing community interest in using fluorescent probes for preclinical studies, − and there are also ongoing efforts to produce multimodality probes for clinical imaging. , Furthermore, researchers are beginning to develop bone-targeting systems for drug delivery and bone tissue engineering. − Most of these studies employ bisphosphonates as the bone-targeting ligands. , While bisphosphonates have very high bone affinity, they also have potent pharmaceutical activities that can potentially disturb the physiological processes they are supposed to target . More benign types of bone-targeting ligands are receiving increased attention, − and a probe design based on multiple iminodiacetate groups is a promising new paradigm.…”

Liposomes as Antibiotic Delivery Systems: A Promising Nanotechnological Strategy against Antimicrobial Resistance

“…The treatment of bone infections is also a huge challenge, requiring prolonged use of antibiotics and characterized by a diminished rate of success. A major issue is the reduced vascular supply of necrotic and infected bone, hindering the antibiotic capacity to reach the infected bone at inhibitory concentrations [71]. As such, an antibiotic local administration associated to nanoplatforms is an attractive approach.…”