Wang Shang, Huang Chao, Gong Yiyu, Chen Junrong, Li Limin, Wang Yanjing, Xu Tingqiang, Bi Weilin, Liu Miao, Sun Jing, Xu Yuanhong
Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, PR China.
Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, PR China; Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610031, PR China.
J Colloid Interface Sci. 2025 Jul 15;690:137292. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2025.137292. Epub 2025 Mar 10.
Bacterial infections have emerged as a significant global public health challenge that requires urgent attention. In the research of popular antimicrobial agents, antimicrobial peptide mimics with good properties have the disadvantage of high toxicity, and nanomaterials with metal-doped carbon dots as the most representative have the problems of easy agglomeration and insufficient bactericidal effect. Herein, combined therapeutic strategy was proposed to reach the best compromise and sterilization effects. We employed an electrostatic co-assembly strategy to combine nanomaterials iron-doped carbon dots (Fe-CDs) and antimicrobial polypeptoids Poly(N-allylglycine) modified with thiol-terminated amines (PNAG-NH), resulting in the creation of the antimicrobial composite Fe-CDs-PNAG-NH. Through electrostatic adsorption, the composite disrupts the electrostatic environment of the bacterial outer membrane, alters its permeability, and triggers an increase in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) to rapidly kill 99.999% of Gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) within 10 min. It exhibited negligible cytotoxicity to normal cells. Furthermore, in vivo experiments demonstrated that Fe-CDs-PNAG-NH accelerated the healing of infected wounds, reduced inflammation. The present study demonstrates that the efficient bactericidal properties of the complexes are triggered by the synergistic action of nanomaterials and antimicrobial polypeptoids, which provides a new strategy to achieve safe and efficient broad-spectrum bactericidal activity in antimicrobial aspects.
细菌感染已成为一项重大的全球公共卫生挑战，亟需关注。在热门抗菌剂的研究中，具有良好性能的抗菌肽模拟物存在高毒性的缺点，而以金属掺杂碳点为最具代表性的纳米材料则存在易团聚和杀菌效果不足的问题。在此，我们提出了联合治疗策略以达到最佳的折衷和杀菌效果。我们采用静电共组装策略，将纳米材料铁掺杂碳点（Fe-CDs）与用巯基封端胺修饰的抗菌类肽聚（N-烯丙基甘氨酸）（PNAG-NH）相结合，从而制备出抗菌复合材料Fe-CDs-PNAG-NH。通过静电吸附，该复合材料破坏细菌外膜的静电环境，改变其通透性，并引发细胞内活性氧（ROS）增加，从而在10分钟内迅速杀死99.999%的革兰氏阴性大肠杆菌（E. coli）和革兰氏阳性金黄色葡萄球菌（S. aureus）。它对正常细胞的细胞毒性可忽略不计。此外，体内实验表明，Fe-CDs-PNAG-NH加速了感染伤口的愈合，减轻了炎症。本研究表明，复合物的高效杀菌特性是由纳米材料和抗菌类肽的协同作用引发的，这为在抗菌方面实现安全高效的广谱杀菌活性提供了一种新策略。
