From Antibiotics to Nano-Antimicrobials, From Dendrimers to Megamers - How to Deal with Antibiotic-Resistance

Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections have become one of the primary causes of morbidity and death as well as a worldwide hazard to public health due to the overuse of antibiotics. It is urgent to develop alternative strategies to improve the therapeutic efficiency of existing antibiotics while minimizing the development of new resistance-mechanisms in pathogenic strains which are still susceptible. Therefore, the aim of my thesis was to develop novel nanotechnology-based antimicrobial strategies against antibiotic-resistant infections that do not induce new mechanisms of antibiotic-resistance in infecting pathogens. Therefore, I have developed nanocarriers made of dendrimers. Dendrimers are highly branched, nanosized macromolecules which can be used for efficient encapsulation and delivery of antimicrobials. In my project，I have successfully developed dual-action nanocarriers with antibiotics combined with Ag nanoparticles based on PAMAM dendrimers and antibiotics combined with NO generation by HA-SNO in PAMAM megamers. The results showed that the combination of antibiotics and non-antibiotics killed antibiotic-resistant strains, as well avoided the development of antibiotic resistance.