Synergistic Antimicrobial and Antibiofilm Nanoparticles Assembled from Naturally Occurring Building Blocks

Bacterial infections represent one of the serious human healthcare threats, and ≈80% of bacterial infections are related to biofilm. So far, there are extensive investigations on the development of robust biomaterials toward the elimination of biofilms and synergistic antibacterial applications. Despite the progress made, concerns have always been raised regarding the sophisticated synthesis and pre-modification of hybrid materials, complicated purification and high-cost work. In this study, a series of robust and integrative nanoparticles (NPs) assembled from two types of natural building blocks (natural polyphenols and tobramycin antibiotics) is successfully fabricated via a one-pot integration approach, which can efficiently destruct the biofilm structure and kill bacteria via enhanced antibiotic infiltration. Notably, natural polyphenols and tobramycin can release from the formed NPs in an on-demand manner in the bacterial-induced environment. The former ones can inhibit quorum sensing within bacteria through competitive combination with autoinducer-2 (AI-2) to remove the existing biofilm, and the latter antibiotics exert high antibacterial activity both in vitro and in vivo. This study provides new inspirations toward robust and synergistic antimicrobial and antibiofilm nanomaterials via the facile integration of naturally occurring molecules.