Applications of Iron Oxide-Based Magnetic Nanoparticles in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Bacterial Infections

Abstract

Diseases caused by bacterial infections, especially drug-resistant bacteria have seriously threatened human health throughout the world. It has been predicted that antimicrobial resistance alone will cause 10 million deaths per year and that early diagnosis and therapy will efficiently decrease the mortality rate caused by bacterial infections. Considering this severity, it is urgent to develop effective methods for the early detection, prevention and treatment of these infections. Until now, numerous efforts based on nanoparticles have been made to detect and kill pathogenic bacteria. Iron oxide-based magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), as potential platforms for bacteria detection and therapy, have drawn great attention owing to their magnetic property. These MNPs have also been broadly used as bioimaging contrast agents and drug delivery and magnetic hyperthermia agents to diagnose and treat bacterial infections. This review therefore overviews the recent progress on MNPs for bacterial detection and therapy, including bacterial separation and enrichment in vitro , bacterial infection imaging in vivo , and their therapeutic activities on pathogenic bacteria. Furthermore, some bacterial-specific targeting agents, used to selectively target the pathogenic bacteria, are also introduced. In addition, the challenges and future perspective of MNPs for bacterial diagnosis and therapy are given at the end of this review. It is expected that this review will provide a better understanding toward the applications of MNPs in the detection and therapy of bacterial infections.

Microbe‐Mediated Extracellular and Intracellular Mineralization: Environmental, Industrial, and Biotechnological Applications

“…Magnetite nanoparticles have been intensively investigated for a plethora of technological applications, including MRI, ferrofluids for audio speakers, magnetically targeted drug delivery, magnetic recording media, water purification, oil spill clean‐up, emulsion separation of crude oil, as well as the diagnosis and treatment of bacterial infections. [ 209,210 ] Dissimilatory Fe(III) reduction is the process by which some microbes transfer electrons to external ferric iron [Fe(III)], reducing it to ferrous iron [Fe(II)] without assimilating the iron. [ 211 ] This biologic electron transfer mechanism is utilized by the Gram‐negative metal and sulfur‐reducing bacterium, G. sulfurreducens , in extracellular reduction of Fe(III) iron oxides (Fe 2 O 3 ; rust) to generate soluble Fe 2+ and solid magnetite ( Figure A).…”

Magnetic Graphene-Based Sheets for Bacteria Capture and Destruction Using a High-Frequency Magnetic Field

“…These unique characteristics provide special sites for immobilization and functionalization by various moieties including polymeric materials such as polyethylenimine [10], chitosan [11], poly(lactic acid) [12,13], and inorganic nanostructures including gold [14], TiO 2 [15], silver nanoparticles [16] and iron oxide nanoparticles [8,14]. Specifically, iron oxide nanoparticles exhibited magnetic characteristics that could be applied to various applications, especially for magnetic fluid hyperthermia [17], magnetic-based bio-separation [18], diagnosis and treatment of infections of bacteria [19], and inductive heating-based magnetic field exposure [20]. Currently, the combination of graphene-based materials and iron oxide nanoparticles have attracted attention due to their potential characteristics as graphene-based materials combined with magnetic nanoparticles [21].…”

Evolving Technologies and Strategies for Combating Antibacterial Resistance in the Advent of the Postantibiotic Era

“…For the sake of rapid onset of the therapy, new strategies are needed to be developed. In this regard, MNP have found vast applications within bacterial separation and enrichment as well as bacterial detection in vitro but also in vivo, as presented in the scheme below ( Figure ) 122. In the concept of bacterial separation and enrichment, surface functionalization of MNP with targeting moieties such as antibodies, narrow‐spectrum antibiotics, antimicrobial peptides, and aptamers have been frequently employed, which can lead to prompt enrichment of the bacterial species from the biological samples 123–125.…”

“…Magnetic nanoparticles for bacterial detection and therapy. Reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) 122. Copyright 2019, the Authors.…”