Nanomaterials-mediated on-demand and precise antibacterial therapies

Bacterial infection is a series of pathological changes caused by bacteria invading the host and interacting with the body. Nowadays, bacterial infection remains a major public health issue and a severe threat to human life and health. Traditional antibiotic therapy is less effective against biofilms and easily causes bacterial resistance, which has urged the development of a substitute antibacterial strategy. Recently, antibacterial nanomaterials have attracted much attention. However, traditional nanomaterials face some problems of insufficient drug concentration at infectious sites and the toxicity of extravasated drug causes damage to healthy tissues. On the contrary, nanomaterials based on advanced on-demand and precise strategies reduce biological toxicity effectively while improving germicidal efficacy, since these type of nanodrugs have higher spatiotemporal controllability. Currently, some smart stimuli-responsive nanomaterials and targeting nanomaterials have been successfully constructed to achieve on-demand and precise antibacterial therapies. This review focuses on the mechanisms, working principles and antimicrobial properties of diverse nanoparticles based on on-demand and precise strategies. Meanwhile, the strengths and inferiorities of different on-demand and precise strategies have been discussed. Finally, this review concludes with our opinions on the future development directions for exploiting next-generation on-demand and precise antibacterial therapies.