In the post-antibiotic era of the human race, multidrug resistance (MDR) bacteria evolve as a global threat to human health. It has been shown that nanoparticles (NPs) kill bacteria through various mechanisms, including binding to DNA. However, the diversity of bacteria requires modifying the nanoparticle platform so that the surface chemistry can be easily tuned to have broad-spectrum antibiotic activity. We hypothesize that efficient antimicrobial agents can be synthesized by tuning the surface chemistry by the segregation of charges on a single nanoparticle. We test this idea by using Janus NPs (JNPs), anisotropic NPs with two distinct hemispheres. One side of the nanoparticles can be coated with hydrophobic/hydrophilic ligands and the other with cationic/anionic ligands. The separation of the two types of segments makes JNPs like antimicrobial peptides, which use the separation of the cationic/anionic charges and hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity to disturb the bacterial membrane. In my talk, I will present our latest results to demonstrate the various antibacterial effects of the Janus nanoparticles on both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. We have found that the Janus nanoparticles are more potent against a broad range of bacteria than nanoparticles with uniform surface chemistry. Our findings suggest that Janus particles can be a new type of nano-antibiotics to combat multi-drug resistant bacteria effectively.

Investigating Janus particle-bacteria interactions towards nano-antibiotics development

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ACS Spring 2023

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