The roadmap of antimicrobial polymeric materials in macromolecular nanotechnology

Despite the fact that we live in an era of advanced and innovative technologies for elucidating underlying mechanisms of diseases and molecularly designing new drugs, infectious diseases continue to be one of the greatest health challenges worldwide. The main drawbacks for conventional antimicrobial agents are the development of multiple drug resistance and adverse side effects. Drug resistance enforces high dose administration of antibiotics, often generating intolerable toxicity, development of new antibiotics, and requests for significant economic, labor, and time investments. Recently, nontraditional antibiotic agents have been of tremendous interest in overcoming resistance that is developed by several pathogenic microorganisms against most of the commonly used antibiotics. Especially, several classes of antimicrobial nanoparticles (NPs) and nanosized carriers for antibiotics delivery have proven their effectiveness for treating infectious diseases, including antibiotics resistant ones, in vitro as well as in animal models. This review summarizes emerging efforts in combating against infectious diseases, particularly using antimicrobial NPs and antibiotics delivery systems as new tools to tackle the current challenges in treating infectious diseases. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Natural superhydrophobic surfaces are often thought to have antibiofouling potential due to their self-cleaning properties. However, when incubated on cicada wings, Pseudomonas aeruginosa cells are not repelled; instead they are penetrated by the nanopillar arrays present on the wing surface, resulting in bacterial cell death. Cicada wings are effective antibacterial, as opposed to antibiofouling, surfaces. Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

In this review we attempt to clarify the notion of what is meant by the term antibacterial surfaces and categorise the approaches that are commonly used in the design of antibacterial surfaces. Application of surface coatings and the modification of the surface chemistry of substrata are generally considered to be a chemical approach to surface modification (as are surface polymerisation, functionalisation, and derivatisation), whereas, modification of the surface architecture of a substrate can be considered a physical approach. Here, the antifouling and bactericidal effects of antibacterial surfaces are briefly discussed. Finally, several recent efforts to design a new generation of antibacterial surfaces, which are based on mimicking the surface nanotopography of natural surfaces, are considered. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.