Metal nanoparticles: understanding the mechanisms behind antibacterial activity

By Y. Slavin, Jason Asnis, U. Häfeli, H. Bach. Journal of Nanobiotechnology, 2017

2,184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As the field of nanomedicine emerges, there is a lag in research surrounding the topic of nanoparticle (NP) toxicity, particularly concerned with mechanisms of action. The continuous emergence of bacterial resistance has challenged the research community to develop novel antibiotic agents. Metal NPs are among the most promising of these because show strong antibacterial activity. This review summarizes and discusses proposed mechanisms of antibacterial action of different metal NPs. These mechanisms of bacterial killing include the production of reactive oxygen species, cation release, biomolecule damages, ATP depletion, and membrane interaction. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the effects of NPs on the regulation of genes and proteins (transcriptomic and proteomic) profiles is discussed.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1a500a9303ef9598bf28fc8ba71ed8b8818c079

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In Biomaterials

1. Khadijah A Altammar
2. C. Liao
3. S. Tjong
4. Yuchao Li

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Khadijah A Altammar
2. S. Tjong

In Materials Chemistry

1. Khadijah A Altammar
2. C. Liao
3. S. Tjong
4. Yuchao Li
5. Dimitris Bikiaris

Citations in the corpus

• Metal-Based Nanoparticles as Antimicrobial Agents: An Overview (2020, background): “Both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria have a negatively charged surface [11].”
• Bactericidal and Cytotoxic Properties of Silver Nanoparticles (2019, background): “However, AgNPs are more effective in destroying gram-negative bacterial strains than gram-positive because gram-positive bacteria have one cytoplasmic membrane and a relatively thick cell wall comprising of several peptidoglycan layers (20–80 nm), while gram-negative bacteria have an external layer ”
• Antibacterial approaches in tissue engineering using metal ions and nanoparticles: From mechanisms to applications (2021, background): “Among M-NPs with identical surface-to-volume ratios, the shape plays an equally important role, where nanotubes and rods are more effective due to the exposition of their planes and thus oxidation of the metals [3,27,28].”
• A review on nanoparticles: characteristics, synthesis, applications, and challenges (2023, background): “Microbes have a range of polysaccharides and proteins in their cell walls, which function as active sites for the binding of metal ions (Slavin et al., 2017).”
• Nano-Strategies to Fight Multidrug Resistant Bacteria—“A Battle of the Titans” (2018, background): “AgNPs are considered the most effective nanomaterial against bacteria but other metallic NPs, such as CuONPs, TiONPs, AuNPs, and Fe O NPs, have also demonstrated bactericidal effects (Dakal et al., 2016; Hemeg, 2017; Slavin et al., 2017).”