Tailoring of intrinsic physicochemical properties of nanoparticles for antimicrobial therapy

The global issue of antibiotic resistance has raised various concerns, and there is an urge for the discovery and development of novel antibiotics to control the infection pandemics. The application of nanoparticles in terms of biomedicine has gained significant attention since past two decades. The development of engineered nanomaterial has given an avenue to target the pathogenic microorganism with an enhanced efficacy of bacterial killing. There are various schools of thoughts with regards to mechanism of nanoparticle’s antibacterial activities such as production of reactive oxygen species, disruption of cell membrane, enhancing deoxyribonucleic acid damage, or the combination of all of the above. The physicochemical properties (size, shape, surface properties, solubility, etc.) of nanoparticles have a big impact on generating the biological responses from the bacterial cells. Tuning the physicochemical properties can significantly change mode of action of nanoparticles within a biological system. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of physicochemical properties of nanoparticles to make an effective use of these nanoparticles for the antimicrobial actions. The scope of this chapter is to highlight the efficacy of nanoparticles as antibacterial agents as compare to the conventional antimicrobial therapy. This chapter will highlight various physicochemical properties, namely, size, shape, surface properties and solubility, and its role in tailoring antibacterial action.