Localised antibiotic delivery and release with luminescent mesoporous silica nanoparticles

Antibacterial resistance (AMR) of one of the most challenging threats to global public health and economic development estimated to cause an additional 10 million deaths per year and a loss of up to US$100 trillion from the global economy by 2050. Besides the limited drugs in the pipeline, more current antibiotic compounds are becoming less effective due to AMR (intrinsic or acquired) mechanisms. Gram-negative bacteria (eg. P. aeruginosa or E. coli) are one of the most difficult class of pathogens to treat because their membrane structure makes them relatively impermeable to many antibiotics. Thus, in order to increase the antibiotic uptake in such cells, in this project we will develop nanoparticles to increase the efficiency of antibiotic delivery localisation. Silica based nanoporous materials are good candidates with high pore volume > 0.9 cm3/g and large surface area (> 900 m2/g). We will be using different functionalisation routes to examine the efficiency of antibiotic release, effect of the surface and the targeting vectors to examine uptake by bacterial cells. We will use luminescent metal complexes to introduce luminescent signal to nanoparticles to monitor cell uptake and tracking of antibacterial agent release.