Polyethylenimine-grafted mesoporous silica nanocarriers markedly enhance the bactericidal effect of curcumin against Staphylococcus aureus biofilm.

The recalcitrant nature of biofilms makes biofilm-associated infections difficult to treat in modern medicine. Biofilms have a high vulnerability to antibiotics and a limited repertoire of antibiotics could act on matured biofilms. This issue has resulted in a gradual paradigm shift in drug discovery and therapy, with anti-biofilm compounds being sought alongside new drug carriers.

Core@shell structured ceria@mesoporous silica nanoantibiotics restrain bacterial growth in vitro and in vivo.

Due to its modular and flexible design options, mesoporous silica provides ample opportunities when developing new strategies for combinatory antibacterial treatments. In this study, antibacterial ceria (CeO) nanoparticles (NP) were used as core material, and were further coated with a mesoporous silica shell (mSiO) to obtain a core@shell structured nanocomposite (CeO@mSiO). The porous silica shell was utilized as drug reservoir, whereby CeO@mSiO was loaded with the antimicrobial agent capsaicin (CeO@mSiO/Cap).

Recent Advances in the Use of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for the Diagnosis of Bacterial Infections.

Public awareness of infectious diseases has increased in recent months, not only due to the current COVID-19 outbreak but also because of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) being declared a top-10 global health threat by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019. These global issues have spiked the realization that new and more efficient methods and approaches are urgently required to efficiently combat and overcome the failures in the diagnosis and therapy of infectious disease. This holds true not only for current diseases, but we should also have enough readiness to fight the unforeseen diseases so as to avoid future pandemics.