AUTHOR=Nuti Silvia , Fernández-Lodeiro Javier , Del Secco Benedetta , Rampazzo Enrico , Rodríguez-González Benito , Capelo José L. , Silva Vanessa , Igrejas Gilberto , Poeta Patrícia , Torres Cármen , Zaccheroni Nelsi , Prodi Luca , Oliveira Elisabete , Lodeiro Carlos TITLE=Engineered Nanostructured Materials for Ofloxacin Delivery JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry VOLUME=6 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2018.00554 DOI=10.3389/fchem.2018.00554 ISSN=2296-2646 ABSTRACT=

Antibiotic resistance is emerging as a growing worldwide problem and finding solutions to this issue is becoming a new challenge for scientists. As the development of new drugs slowed down, advances in nanotechnology offer great opportunities, with the possibility of designing new systems for carrying, delivery and administration of drugs already in use. Engineered combinations of the synthetic, broad-spectrum antibiotic ofloxacin, rarely studied in this field, with different types of silver, mesoporous silica-based and Pluronic/silica-based nanoparticles have been explored. The nanocarriers as silver core@silica mesoporous (AgMSNPs) and dye-doped silica nanoparticles functionalized with ofloxacin were synthesized and their antibacterial properties studied against S. aureus and E. coli. The best antibacterial results were obtained for the AgMSNPs nanosystem@ofloxacin for the strain S. aureus ATCC 25923, with MIC and MBC values of 5 and 25 μg/mL, proving the efficacy and synergetic effect of the antibiotic and the Ag core of the nanoparticles.