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Author Spotlight: Exploring the Antibacterial Effects of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles in Overcoming Antibiotic Resistance
Published on: September 27, 2024
Amphiphilic Janus Nanoparticles Synergize with Antibiotics to Restore Susceptibility in Drug-Resistant Gram-Negative
Martijn Zwama1, Swagata Bhattacharyya2, Nozomi Sakurai1,3
1Department of Biomolecular Science and Regulation, SANKEN, The University of Osaka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan.
Abstract:
Antibiotic resistance in bacteria poses a global health challenge, underscoring the need for strategies that restore the effectiveness of existing drugs. Here, we demonstrate that amphiphilic Janus nanoparticles (NPs), with separate polycationic and hydrophobic hemispheres, act as effective antibiotic adjuvants that synergistically enhance the activity of conventional antibiotics. Unlike uniformly cationic NPs, Janus NPs exhibited strong synergy with multiple antibiotics against Acinetobacter baumannii, including the multidrug-resistant clinical isolate A. baumannii A42-2. Embedding Janus NPs in agar gel provided a stable platform that reproducibly increased antibiotic susceptibility in various Gram-negative bacteria, including A. baumannii and highly motile species such as Escherichia coli. These findings demonstrate that amphiphilic Janus NPs can synergistically boost antibiotic activity and that embedding them in gels yields a stable platform for assessing their performance and potentially deploying them in future biomedical applications.
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