Infectious
diseases induced by multidrug-resistant bacteria are a challenging
problem in medicine because of global rise in the drug resistance
to pathogenic bacteria. Despite great efforts on the development of
antibiotics and antimicrobial agents, there is still a great need
to develop a strategy to early detect bacterial infections and eradicate
bacteria effectively and simultaneously. The innate immune systems
of various organisms produce antimicrobial peptides, which kill a
broad range of bacteria with minimal cytotoxicity to mammalian cells.
Therefore, antimicrobial peptides have recently attracted increasing
attention as an alternative to conventional antibiotics in antibacterial
medications. Here, we report a new family of antibacterial agents,
which is formulated from self-assembly of a chimeric antimicrobial
lipopeptide (DSPE-HnMc) and amphiphilic biodegradable polymers. HnMc
micelles could effectively bind the bacterial membrane to kill a wide
spectrum of bacteria and bacterial biofilms. In the studies of mouse
models of drug-resistant bacterial infections, HnMc micelles could
target bacterial infections with high specificity and also kill drug-resistant
bacteria effectively, demonstrating the great potential of HnMc micelles
as imaging and targeted antibacterial agents. These findings also
provide new insight into the design of antimicrobial peptide-based
nanomedicine for detection and treatment of bacterial infections.
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