Using nanoparticles for efficient delivery of antimicrobial peptides to treat deep infections

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Mar 18 2021

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this review article the authors Yingxue Deng, Rui Huang, Songyin Huang and Menghua Xiong from South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P. R. China and Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P. R. China discuss how nanoparticles enable efficient delivery of antimicrobial peptides for the treatment of deep infections.

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are rarely directly used to treat deep infections due to their systemic toxicity and low bioavailability. The authors summarize recent progress that researchers employed nanoparticles based delivery systems to deliver AMPs for the treatment of deep infections.

Nanoparticles-based delivery systems offer a strategy to increase the therapeutic index of AMPs by preventing proteolysis, increasing the accumulation at infection sites, and reducing toxicity. Especially, the development of intelligent nanocarriers can achieve selective activation and active target in the infectious sites, thus improving the therapeutic efficacy against bacterial infection and reducing the toxicity against normal tissues.