DESCRIPTION

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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