The Two Weapons against Bacterial Biofilms: Detection and Treatment

Abstract

Bacterial biofilms are defined as complex aggregates of bacteria that grow attached to surfaces or are associated with interfaces. Bacteria within biofilms are embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix made of polysaccharides, nucleic acids, and proteins. It is recognized that bacterial biofilms are responsible for the majority of microbial infections that occur in the human body, and that biofilm-related infections are extremely difficult to treat. This is related with the fact that microbial cells in biofilms exhibit increased resistance levels to antibiotics in comparison with planktonic (free-floating) cells. In the last years, the introduction into the market of novel compounds that can overcome the resistance to antimicrobial agents associated with biofilm infection has slowed down. If this situation is not altered, millions of lives are at risk, and this will also strongly affect the world economy. As such, research into the identification and eradication of biofilms is important for the future of human health. In this sense, this article provides an overview of techniques developed to detect and imaging biofilms as well as recent strategies that can be applied to treat biofilms during the several biofilm formation steps.

Biofilms in Surgical Site Infections: Recent Advances and Novel Prevention and Eradication Strategies

“…It is also important to mention that nanotechnology-based approaches include a vast variety of NPs and nanocomposites, including polymer-based NPs, dendrimers, liposomes, and others. There are already manuscripts that have reviewed the use of liposomes as well as polymeric NPs with inherent antibiofilm activity [ 80 , 81 , 82 ]. Polymeric NPs are the most successful NPs used as antibacterial and antibiofilm strategies since these composites have shown great potential for targeted delivery of drugs in the biomedical industry [ 80 , 81 ].…”

“…There are already manuscripts that have reviewed the use of liposomes as well as polymeric NPs with inherent antibiofilm activity [ 80 , 81 , 82 ]. Polymeric NPs are the most successful NPs used as antibacterial and antibiofilm strategies since these composites have shown great potential for targeted delivery of drugs in the biomedical industry [ 80 , 81 ]. They present attractive properties, such as biocompatibility, non-toxicity to biological systems, biodegradability, stability during storage, controlled release, target delivery, and harmfulness to pathogenic microbes, resulting in higher therapeutic efficacy [ 83 ].…”

“…These infections often progress to more complex biofilm-related infections that are hard to detect by simple and non-invasive techniques and are easily mistaken for sterile inflammations. Therefore, in the last few years, new diagnostic tools were invented specifically for clinical environments, providing high-resolution and practical medical procedures for the treatment of bacterial infections [ 80 ].…”

“…Moreover, another interesting approach is to combine machine learning with image processing, thereby assisting doctors during clinical and diagnostic processes. As reported in the literature, machine learning systems can be an asset to determine bacterial concentrations in biofilms, while deep learning models have already been applied for detection and characterization of all four stages of biofilm formation [ 80 , 98 ]. Other deep learning models, such as variations of convolutional neural networks, were used to extract the cells’ geometrical properties from microscopy features, allowing researchers to explain how the biofilm structurally adapts to the surface properties [ 99 ].…”

“…Other deep learning models, such as variations of convolutional neural networks, were used to extract the cells’ geometrical properties from microscopy features, allowing researchers to explain how the biofilm structurally adapts to the surface properties [ 99 ]. More importantly, these deep learning models based on artificial intelligence can be trained to detect polymicrobial biofilms with 90% accuracy in contrast to 50% when compared to human experts, thus offering an accurate alternative to the commonly used and time-consuming biochemical methods [ 80 , 98 ].…”