Tuesday, 18 August 2020, 6:35 AM
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The increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is of increasing concern to doctors. A team of Dutch researchers, including Groningers, has developed a ‘smart’ nanoparticle in collaboration with Chinese colleagues as a possible remedy.
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That nanoparticle is able to find its way to the bacteria that cause an infection in a body. Many bacteria protect themselves against antibiotics by covering themselves with a kind of mucus layer. The nanoparticle does manage to penetrate through that.
Defense
The particle also causes the concentration of bacteria in the infected body part to be broken up. As a result, the bacteria are spread throughout the body, so that they can be better killed by existing antibiotics and the body’s own immune cells.
According to professor Henny van der Mei of the UMCG, more research is being done into nanoparticles that fight bacteria, but this is the first smart nanoparticle to have both of these functions.
Mice
The effect has been investigated in mice that had a certain infection. Very quickly the smart nanoparticles managed to find the source of infection. The particles released the bacteria from the infection.
There is good hope that the way the process takes place in a mouse body is the same in a human body. It is unclear when the smart nanoparticle can actually be used to cure people. Much research is still needed for this.
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