Toxic Na**particles Coated with Antibiotics Safely Kill Drug Resistant Bacteria
 

Toxic Na**particles Coated with Antibiotics Safely Kill Drug Resistant Bacteria
[IMG]https://www.medgadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/na**particles-silver--300x218.jpg[/IMG][IMG]https://www.medgadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/silver-silica-na**particles.jpg[/IMG]

A team of Brazilian scientists may have come up with a practical way of killing off resistant bacteria by targeting themآ*withآ*toxic silver-silica na**particles coated with an antibiotic. Since antibiotics don’t have the full punch to eliminate bacteria resistant to them, the researchers instead used the antibiotic ampicillinآ*as a mechanism to deliver the killer na**particles to the pathogens.

**rmally, silver-silica na**particles would be toxic to the body, but because they’re coated with ampicillin they seem to be inert to the body’s cells and don’t affect how they divide and multiply.

Bacterial cells, on the other hand, receive a large dose of the antibiotic coupled with a silver-silica na**particle attack. In the laboratory study, the combined effect was powerful e**ugh to overcome bacterial drug resistance of a strain of E. coli, an impressive feat. The bacterial killing properties of these functionalized na**particles were also enhanced by positioning the antibiotic molecules on the surface of silver-silica na**particle cores so that the sides that most affect bacterial membranes end up on the outside.

â??There are commercial ***** that contain na**particles, which typically serve to coat the active ingredient and extend its lifetime inside the organism. Our strategy is different. We decorate the surface of the na**particles with certain chemical groups that direct them to the site where theyâ??re designed to act, so theyâ??re highly selective,â?* said Mateus Borba Cardoso, lead study author and a researcher at Brazil’s National Energy & Materials Research Center (CNPEM).

Testing the toxicity of the so called “na**antibiotic,” the researchers exposed human liver cells to the na**particles and showed that they don’t seem to be toxic to the cells.

Study in Scientific Reports: Defeating Bacterial Resistance and Preventing Mammalian Cells Toxicity Through Rational Design of Antibiotic-Functionalized Na**particles…

Via: FAPESP…

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