This article was submitted to Nanobiotechnology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
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Antimicrobial resistance is a global crisis and, along with the availability of few effective antimicrobials, emphasize the need for new approaches and different safe and effective alternatives to current antimicrobials strategies. Recent progress in biomedical applications has been proposed to prevent or treat resistant pathogens due to the limited efficacy of antimicrobial agents. Metal nanoparticles (NPs) are attracting huge interest in nanobiology and nanomedicine fields as a new class of antimicrobial agents, because of their ease of preparation, their high stability over time, and lower probability of developing resistance by microorganisms. In the past 2 decades, NPs have received attention as a potential future treatment of a wide range of serious infections. Particularly metal NPs are considered promising due to their unique physicochemical properties, chemical composition, size, surface charge, and similar size to intra- and extra-cellular components that allow specifically interact with molecular and sub-cellular structures. Furthermore, the release of metal ions from these NPs also triggers the death of microbial pathogens. For example, most metal-based nanomaterials can generate broad-spectrum and potent antimicrobial activity by specific nano-biological effects including physical damage as well as cellular stress to inactivate microbial cells. In this sense, a disturbance in the prooxidant-antioxidant balance can lead to damage to carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids and, if this damage is not repaired, cell death can occur (
This Research Topic focused on “
The second original research included in this volume was performed with the aim of knowing the extracellular production of AgNps using fungal extracts. The evaluation of their antimicrobial activity against resistant and multi-resistant
The subsequent publication has focused on publishing the synergistic antibacterial and cell surface topology study of carbon nanodots (C-dot) and tetracycline against
Finally, this volume included a mini-review highlighting the recent research advances covering scientific approaches to the photosensitization process and supramolecular chemistry applied to the development of efficient applications of antimicrobial photodynamic therapy, with a brief discussion of the remaining challenges to further research for new antimicrobial photodynamic treatments (
Nanotechnology offers the opportunity to exploit antimicrobial properties by manipulating their size to dimensions on the nanometer scale. The importance to eradicate microbial resistance to multiple antimicrobials justifies the need to find new antimicrobial drugs in the near future. In conclusion, we are proud to present our Research Topic “Fighting Antimicrobial Resistant Microorganisms: Current Status and Emerging Strategies Using Nanomaterials” in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. We believe that all readers should experience the possibilities surrounding biotechnological tools as well as in the way to manipulate bio-nano interactions for medical applications to combat resistant microorganisms as has been showed in our topic. We are also optimistic that this Research Topic provides outstanding insights into the important issues of nanomaterials associated with the eradication and control of infections. Understanding the interactions between microorganisms by specific nano-biological effects and NPs play a crucial role in the development of the biomedical application of nanomedicine.
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