Bacterial infections
caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens have
become intractable problems to public health. Therefore, there is
an imperious demand for developing new approaches to effectively kill
antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In this work, we report a kind of bacteria-targeted
polydopamine nanoparticle exhibiting great photothermal killing ability
toward methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by nano-localized hyperpyrexia under low-power near-infrared
(NIR) light irradiation. These bacteria-targeted nanoparticles (PDA-PEG-Van)
are prepared by modifying polydopamine nanoparticles with thiol-poly(ethylene
glycol) (mPEG-SH) and vancomycin (Van) molecules. The PEG shell endows
the nanoparticles with excellent long-term circulation stability.
Due to the multivalent hydrogen-bond interactions between vancomycin and the MRSA cell
wall, the vancomycin-modified polydopamine nanoparticles can specifically
target MRSA rather than mammalian cells. These bacteria-targeted nanoparticles
are employed as a nano-localized heat source to kill MRSA via disrupting
the bacterial cell wall and membrane under irradiation of low-power
NIR light. More importantly, the surrounding healthy tissues suffer
bare damage, owing to the absence of any targeting effect of PDA-PEG-Van
toward mammalian cells and the low power of NIR light used in the
therapeutic process. Given the above advantages, the bacteria-targeted
polydopamine nanoparticles proposed in this work show tremendous potential
to treat MRSA infections, because they can effectively limit localized
heating in the infection sites to kill bacteria and cut down damage
to healthy tissues.
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