Alterations
in the normal gastrointestinal microbial community
caused by unhealthy diet, environmental factors, and antibiotic overuse
may severely affect human health and well-being. Novel antimicrobial
drug formulations targeting pathogenic microflora while not affecting
or even supporting symbiotic microflora are urgently needed. Here
we report fabrication of a novel antimicrobial nanocontainer based
on halloysite nanotubes loaded with curcumin and protected with a
dextrin outer layer (HNTs+Curc/DX) and its effective use to suppress
the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria in Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes. Nanocontainers have been obtained using vacuum-facilitated
loading of hydrophobic curcumin into halloysite lumens. We have applied
UV–vis and infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetry and microscopy
to characterize the HNTs+Curc/DX nanocontainers. In experiments in
vitro we found that HNTs+Curc/DX effectively suppressed the growth
of Serratia marcescens cells, whereas Escherichia
coli bacteria were not affected. We applied HNTs+Curc/DX
nanocontainers to alleviate the S. marcescens infection
in C. elegans nematodes in vivo. The nematodes ingest
HNTs+Curc/DX at 4–6 ng per worm, which results in improvement
of the nematodes’ fertility and life expectancy. Remarkably,
treatment of S. marcescens-infected nematodes with
HNTs+Curc/DX nanocontainers completely restored the longevity, demonstrating
the enhanced bioavailability of hydrophobic curcumin. We believe that
our results reported here open new avenues for fabrication of effective
antimicrobial nanoformulations based on hydrophobic drugs and clay
nanotubes.
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