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Advanced Dendritic and Hyperbranched Polymers

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Biobased and Biodegradable Polymers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 3729

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Division of Medical Biology, Jan Kochanowski Universityin Kielce, 25-369 Kielce, Poland
Interests: nanomaterials with antimicrobial properties; nanocarriers of antimicrobial proteins; polymer modification of proteins; toxicity of nanomaterials

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Guest Editor
Department of Organic Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry, University of Alcala, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
Interests: dendrimer; nanoparticles; antibacterial; drug delivery

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Antibacterial resistance has become a global threat; of particular importance are multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria, with a broad spectrum of virulence factors. Multidrug resistance is overrepresented in Gram-negative bacteria, where the outer and inner membranes are effective barriers against most antibacterial agents. Recently, there has been a noticeable trend towards targets in the outer membrane in preclinical projects. Most solutions are currently focused on finding the best permeabilizer of the bacterial membrane as the main mechanism of action to kill bacteria. Recent studies have shown the great potential of dendritic polymers, which may represent a new class of bacterial membrane permeabilizers. In this regard, the mechanisms of permeabilization of the outer bacterial membrane due to dendritic and hyperbranched polymers have now become of significant interest. We believe that knowledge of how dendritic polymers disrupt the bacterial membrane to carry out antibacterial activities is crucial in order to further develop potent and effective antibacterial agents.

For this Special Issue, we invite submissions in the form of manuscripts focusing on dendritic and hyperbranched polymers that could be applied in biomedicine as new bacterial membrane permeabilizer agents.

Dr. Karol Ciepluch
Dr. Javier Sánchez-Nieves
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • dendritic polymers
  • hyperbranched polymers
  • antimicrobial polymers
  • nanobiotics
  • bacterial membrane permeabilization

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 1486 KiB  
Article
Effect of the Combination of Levofloxacin with Cationic Carbosilane Dendron and Peptide in the Prevention and Treatment of Staphylococcus aureus Biofilms
by Jael Fernandez, Ángela Martin-Serrano, Natalia Gómez-Casanova, Annarita Falanga, Stefania Galdiero, Francisco Javier de la Mata, Irene Heredero-Bermejo and Paula Ortega
Polymers 2021, 13(13), 2127; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13132127 - 29 Jun 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2795
Abstract
Antibiotic resistance and biofilm-related infections, persistent in conventional antimicrobial treatment, are continuously increasing and represent a major health problem worldwide. Therefore, the development of new effective treatments to prevent and treat biofilm-related infections represents a crucial challenge. Unfortunately, the extensive use of antibiotics [...] Read more.
Antibiotic resistance and biofilm-related infections, persistent in conventional antimicrobial treatment, are continuously increasing and represent a major health problem worldwide. Therefore, the development of new effective treatments to prevent and treat biofilm-related infections represents a crucial challenge. Unfortunately, the extensive use of antibiotics has led to an increase of resistant bacteria with the subsequent loss of effectivity of commercial antibiotics, mainly due to antibiotic resistance and the ability of some bacteria to form microbial communities in biotic or abiotic surfaces (biofilms). In some cases, these biofilms are resistant to high concentrations of antibiotics that lead to treatment failure and recurrence of the associated infections. In the fight against microbial resistance, the combination of traditional antibiotics with new compounds (combination therapy) is an alternative that is becoming more extensive in the medical field. In this work, we studied the cooperative effects between levofloxacin, an approved antibiotic, and peptides or cationic dendritic molecules, compounds that are emerging as a feasible solution to overcome the problem of microbial resistance caused by pathogenic biofilms. We studied a new therapeutic approach that involves the use of levofloxacin in combination with a cationic carbosilane dendron, called MalG2(SNHMe2Cl)4, or a synthetic cell-penetrating peptide, called gH625, conjugated to the aforementioned dendron. To carry out the study, we used two combinations (1) levofloxacin/dendron and (2) levofloxacin/dendron-peptide nanoconjugate. The results showed the synergistic effect of the combination therapy to treat Staphylococcus aureus biofilms. In addition, we generated a fluorescein labeled peptide that allowed us to observe the conjugate (dendron-peptide) localization throughout the bacterial biofilm by confocal laser scanning microscopy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Dendritic and Hyperbranched Polymers)
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