Biofilm-related infections are associated with high mortality and morbidity, combined with increased hospital stays and overall treatment costs. Traditional antibiotics play an essential role in controlling biofilms; however, they are becoming less efficient, due to the emergence of drug-resistant bacterial strains. Therefore, it is crucial to develop novel strategies to combat biofilms. In the present work, we developed a simple and efficient strategy to target bacterial biofilms and their subsequent eradication through photothermal treatment. The developed nanomaterial is engineered with low protein binding, specific biofilm targeting, and efficient photothermal properties. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) exhibit a photothermal effect, and a bacterial protein is used to target AuNPs to <i>S. epidermidis</i> biofilms. In addition, we use elastin-like polypeptides (ELP) to engineer thermally responsive nanoparticles. The ELP transition temperature (Tt) is tunable and controls how rapidly near-infrared (NIR) irradiation will increase the local thermal response. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) passivates AuNPs, reducing complications from the protein corona. Atomic absorption spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy shows strong binding of these functionalized AuNPs with biofilm under static conditions. The AuNPs demonstrated a maximum temperature of approximately 60 <sup>o</sup>C after NIR irradiation, which resulted in a 10,000-fold improvement in killing efficiency compared to untreated controls (p &lt; 0.0001). The strategy of targeting biofilms using nanomaterials proposed in this work could also be used as a general method for the design and fabrication of functional nanomaterials to combat drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Targeted photothermal ablation of biofilms using functionalized gold nanoparticles

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