Use of peptide-modified nanoparticles as a bacterial cell targeting agent for enhanced antibacterial activity and other biomedical applications

Bacterial pathogens have posed a serious threat to human health because they are difficult to be eliminated inside cells. Here, an effective design of poly(lactic-co-glycolic) (PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs) modified with antimicrobial peptides and loaded with gentamicin (Gen) was reported with enhanced antibacterial activity and cellular internalization ability. The results showed that the drug loading capacity and encapsulation efficiency of OVTp12-modified NPs were 7.55 % and 81.3 %, respectively. We observed that OVTp12 and OVTp12-modified NPs significantly increased the interaction with Staphylococcus aureus cells. Moreover, OVTp12-modified NPs showed an effective inhibitory effect on S. aureus with low cytotoxicity. The results of cell internalization indicated that OVTp12-modified NPs were markedly higher than that of unmodified nanoparticles when incubated with MC3T3-E1 cells. In conclusion, the bacterial cell-targeting ability of this antimicrobial peptide provides advantages for the treatment of intracellular bacterial infections.