Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, United Kingdom.
Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, J J Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Mar 1;15(8):10452-10463. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c21013. Epub 2023 Feb 20.
The rapid emergence of drug-resistant bacteria and fungi poses a threat for healthcare worldwide. The development of novel effective small molecule therapeutic strategies in this space has remained challenging. Therefore, one orthogonal approach is to explore biomaterials with physical modes of action that have the potential to generate antimicrobial activity and, in some cases, even prevent antimicrobial resistance. Here, to this effect, we describe an approach for forming silk-based films that contain embedded selenium nanoparticles. We show that these materials exhibit both antibacterial and antifungal properties while crucially also remaining highly biocompatible and noncytotoxic toward mammalian cells. By incorporating the nanoparticles into silk films, the protein scaffold acts in a 2-fold manner; it protects the mammalian cells from the cytotoxic effects of the bare nanoparticles, while also providing a template for bacterial and fungal eradication. A range of hybrid inorganic/organic films were produced and an optimum concentration was found, which allowed for both high bacterial and fungal death while also exhibiting low mammalian cell cytotoxicity. Such films can thus pave the way for next-generation antimicrobial materials for applications such as wound healing and as agents against topical infections, with the added benefit that bacteria and fungi are unlikely to develop antimicrobial resistance to these hybrid materials.
耐药细菌和真菌的迅速出现对全球的医疗保健构成了威胁。在这一领域开发新型有效的小分子治疗策略仍然具有挑战性。因此，一种正交的方法是探索具有物理作用模式的生物材料，这些材料具有产生抗菌活性的潜力，在某些情况下甚至可以防止抗菌药物耐药性的产生。在这里，我们描述了一种形成含有嵌入硒纳米粒子的丝基薄膜的方法。我们表明，这些材料既具有抗菌又具有抗真菌特性，同时对哺乳动物细胞保持高度的生物相容性和非细胞毒性。通过将纳米粒子掺入丝膜中，蛋白质支架以双重方式起作用；它保护哺乳动物细胞免受裸露纳米粒子的细胞毒性影响，同时也为细菌和真菌的清除提供了模板。制备了一系列混合无机/有机薄膜，并找到了最佳浓度，既能实现高细菌和真菌死亡率，又能表现出低哺乳动物细胞细胞毒性。因此，这些薄膜可以为下一代抗菌材料铺平道路，例如用于伤口愈合和作为针对局部感染的药物，并且细菌和真菌不太可能对这些混合材料产生抗菌药物耐药性。
