A rapid screening assay for identifying mycobacteria targeted nanoparticle antibiotics

Samantha Mary Kate Donnellan*, Lang Tran, Helinor Jane Johnston, Joyce McLuckie, Karen Stevenson, Vicki Stone

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    14 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Antibiotic resistance is a serious problem. Nanotechnology offers enormous potential in medicine, yet there is limited knowledge regarding the toxicity of nanoparticles (NP) for mycobacterial species that cause serious human diseases (e.g. tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy). Mycobacterial diseases are a major global health problem; TB caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) kills up to 2 million people annually and there are over 200 000 leprosy cases each year caused by Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae). Few drugs are effective against these mycobacteria and increasing antibiotic resistance exacerbates the problem. As such, alternative therapies are urgently needed but most current assays used to assess the effectiveness of therapeutics against mycobacteria are slow and expensive. This study aimed to develop a rapid, low-cost assay which can be used for screening the antimicrobial properties of compounds against pathogenic mycobacteria and to assess the toxicity of three NP (silver [Ag], copper oxide [Cu(II)O], and zinc oxide [ZnO]) against a green fluorescent protein reporter strain of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, a slow growing, pathogenic mycobacterial species causing paratuberculosis in ruminants. Fluorescence was used to monitor mycobacterial growth over time, with NP concentrations of 6.25–100 μg/mL tested for up to 7 days, and a method of data analysis was designed to permit comparison between results. Mycobacterial sensitivity to the NP was found to be NP composition specific and toxicity could be ranked in the following order: Ag > Cu(II)O > ZnO.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)761–769
    Number of pages9
    JournalNanotoxicology
    Volume10
    Issue number6
    Early online date5 Feb 2016
    DOIs
    Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 5 Feb 2016

    Keywords

    • Antibacterial activity
    • antibiotic resistance
    • drug screening
    • mycobacterium
    • nanomedicine

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Biomedical Engineering
    • Toxicology

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