The same bacterial infection can be just a nuisance or a life threatening condition, depending on where it has found a home. Once bacteria begin to form biofilms, it is often too late to administer antibiotics as they can’t penetrate the multi-layered cellular structure that a bacterial colony can form. Typically, large doses of antibiotics are administered to try to fight off the infection, but that can lead to further resistance. Now researchers from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research in Saarbrücken, Germany have developed a technique for using nanoparticles to transport antibiotics to where they have not gone before.
The nanoparticles are created from a biodegradable polymer oil, stabilizer, and the antibiotic clarithromycin as the payload. The package is about the size of a virus, allowing it to squeeze through small passages and reach distant places.
They tested these nanoparticles using Staphylococcus aureus as the target bacteria that’s a scourge in today’s clinical environments. Using aerosol deposition, they showed that the antibiotic successfully penetrated bacterial biofilms and reached into the insides of individual lung cells. So far this has proven effective in laboratory studies, with the next step to test the technique on real, breathing lungs.
“Using nanoparticles to deliver drugs to a local site of infection is a promising strategy for overcoming side effects, increasing treatment efficacy, and overcoming resistance. The nanoparticles we have developed have a number of advantages as drug carriers; they do not provoke a toxic effect, they are highly stable, they release the drug over a sustained period, and they can overcome cellular barriers. We believe that our formulation shows promise to improve the antibacterial efficacy which could help patients with lung infections, since the antibiotic can reach the infection site directly and therefore decrease the side effects we see during traditional routes of administration,” said Dr Cristiane Carvalho-Wodarz, from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research.