Journal article
Repurposing antimicrobials with ultrasound-triggered nanoscale systems for targeted biofilm drug delivery
- Abstract:
- Chronic infections represent a major clinical challenge due to the enhanced antimicrobial tolerance of biofilm-dwelling bacteria. To address this challenge, an ultrasound-responsive nanoscale drug delivery platform (nanodroplets) is presented in this work, loaded with four different antimicrobial agents, capable of simultaneous biofilm disruption and targeted antimicrobial delivery. When loaded, a robust protective effect against clinically-derived MRSA and ESBL Gram-positive and Gram-negative planktonic isolates was shown in vitro. Upon application of therapeutic ultrasound, an average 7.6-fold, 44.4-fold, and 25.5-fold reduction was observed in the antibiotic concentrations compared to free drug required to reach the MBC, MBEC and complete persister eradication levels, respectively. Nanodroplets substantially altered subcellular distribution of encapsulated antimicrobials, enhancing accumulation of antimicrobials by 11.1-fold within the biofilm-residing bacteria’s cytoplasm compared to treatment with unencapsulated drugs. These findings illustrate the potential of this multifunctional platform to overcome the critical penetration and localization limitations of antimicrobials within biofilms, opening potential new avenues in the treatment of chronic clinical infections.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1003.3KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s44259-025-00086-3
Authors
+ Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0439y7842
- Grant:
- EP/V026623/1
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- npj Antimicrobials and Resistance More from this journal
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 22
- Publication date:
- 2025-04-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-02-06
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2731-8745
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
2092935
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2092935
- Deposit date:
-
2025-03-01
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Choi et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record