New horizons of nanotechnology-enabled phage therapies for effective management of bacterial infections.
Malook MB, Ijaz M, Zhang J, Huang X, Ahmed T
Antimicrobial Resistance
Fire blight devastates apple and pear orchards worldwide, and the same antibiotic-resistance crisis threatening human medicine is quietly making those bacterial plant diseases harder to control too — phage therapies enhanced by nanotechnology could become a tool growers reach for in the next decade.
Bacteriophages are viruses that hunt and destroy specific bacteria, and scientists have been trying to use them as an alternative to antibiotics. The problem is that these phages are fragile, hard to deliver precisely, and bacteria can evolve to resist them. This review explores how nanotechnology — engineering materials at the scale of individual molecules — can wrap phages in protective coatings, steer them to the right place, and make them last longer, potentially unlocking a powerful new weapon against drug-resistant infections.
Key Findings
Conventional antibiotics are losing effectiveness against a growing number of bacterial pathogens due to antimicrobial resistance, driving urgent need for alternatives like phage therapy.
Three core technical barriers limit phage therapy: poor stability outside a host, inability to deliver phages precisely to infection sites, and bacterial resistance to phage attack.
Nanotechnology strategies — including nanomaterial encapsulation, surface functionalization, and controlled-release carriers — directly address all three barriers and can extend phage circulation time in the body.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers review how combining nanotechnology with bacteriophage therapy — using viruses that kill bacteria — could overcome the limitations of both antibiotics and conventional phage therapy to fight drug-resistant bacterial infections.
Abstract Preview
Bacterial infections continue to persist as a major global healthcare challenge, exacerbated by the alarming rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) that renders conventional antibiotics increasingl...
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