Lopez-Abarrategui Carlos, Figueroa-Espi Viviana, Lugo-Alvarez Maria B, Pereira Caroline D, Garay Hilda, Barbosa João Arg, Falcão Rosana, Jiménez-Hernández Linnavel, Estévez-Hernández Osvaldo, Reguera Edilso, Franco Octavio L, Dias Simoni C, Otero-Gonzalez Anselmo J
Faculty of Biology, Center for Protein Studies.
Lab of Structural Analysis, Institute of Materials Science and Technology, Havana University, La Habana, Havana, Cuba.
Int J Nanomedicine. 2016 Aug 9;11:3849-57. doi: 10.2147/IJN.S107561. eCollection 2016.
Diseases caused by bacterial and fungal pathogens are among the major health problems in the world. Newer antimicrobial therapies based on novel molecules urgently need to be developed, and this includes the antimicrobial peptides. In spite of the potential of antimicrobial peptides, very few of them were able to be successfully developed into therapeutics. The major problems they present are molecule stability, toxicity in host cells, and production costs. A novel strategy to overcome these obstacles is conjugation to nanomaterial preparations. The antimicrobial activity of different types of nanoparticles has been previously demonstrated. Specifically, magnetic nanoparticles have been widely studied in biomedicine due to their physicochemical properties. The citric acid-modified manganese ferrite nanoparticles used in this study were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, which confirmed the formation of nanocrystals of approximately 5 nm diameter. These nanoparticles were able to inhibit Candida albicans growth in vitro. The minimal inhibitory concentration was 250 µg/mL. However, the nanoparticles were not capable of inhibiting Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli) or Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus). Finally, an antifungal peptide (Cm-p5) from the sea animal Cenchritis muricatus (Gastropoda: Littorinidae) was conjugated to the modified manganese ferrite nanoparticles. The antifungal activity of the conjugated nanoparticles was higher than their bulk counterparts, showing a minimal inhibitory concentration of 100 µg/mL. This conjugate proved to be nontoxic to a macrophage cell line at concentrations that showed antimicrobial activity.
由细菌和真菌病原体引起的疾病是世界上主要的健康问题之一。迫切需要开发基于新型分子的新型抗菌疗法，这其中包括抗菌肽。尽管抗菌肽具有潜力，但很少有能成功开发成治疗药物的。它们存在的主要问题是分子稳定性、对宿主细胞的毒性以及生产成本。克服这些障碍的一种新策略是与纳米材料制剂结合。不同类型纳米颗粒的抗菌活性此前已得到证实。具体而言，磁性纳米颗粒因其物理化学性质在生物医学中得到了广泛研究。本研究中使用的柠檬酸修饰的锰铁氧体纳米颗粒通过高分辨率透射电子显微镜进行了表征，证实形成了直径约5nm的纳米晶体。这些纳米颗粒能够在体外抑制白色念珠菌的生长。最低抑菌浓度为250μg/mL。然而，这些纳米颗粒无法抑制革兰氏阴性菌（大肠杆菌）或革兰氏阳性菌（金黄色葡萄球菌）。最后，将来自海洋动物粒花冠小月螺（腹足纲：滨螺科）的一种抗真菌肽（Cm-p5）与修饰后的锰铁氧体纳米颗粒结合。结合后的纳米颗粒的抗真菌活性高于其未结合的对应物，最低抑菌浓度为100μg/mL。在显示出抗菌活性的浓度下，这种结合物被证明对巨噬细胞系无毒。
