Title: Important Advances in Antibacterial Nanoparticle-Mediated Photodynamic Therapy
Abstract:
Apart from enhancing the selectivity of Photodynamic therapy (PDT) for the disease over host tissue cells, nanotechnology also facilitates combinations of PDT with several non-invasive technologies, resulting in even further efficacy enhancement, and innovations for target specificity. The applications of PDT have expanded to disease types other than cancers, including bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases. The achievement of enhanced target specificity, which implies reduced systemic dose requirements for sufficient photosensitizer at the disease site and in the disease cells, is showing promise in research studies to reduce the emergence of resistance by microbial pathogens. The pursuit for selectivity has also ushered in various combinations of chemotherapy with PDT, essentially presenting the possibility of repurposing several antibiotics that are being used less because of resistance. Inorganic and organic dye nanoparticle photosensitizers are a novel nanotechnology discovery that has shown enhancement of PDT because of disease targeting. This paper describes the type I and II mechanisms of photodynamic and sonodynamic therapy, first and second-generation photosensitizers in the market, and the roles played by nanomaterials across the therapeutic value chain. The paper discusses nanoparticles as delivery systems for photosensitizers, smart stimulus-responsive and disease-targeting nanoparticles, focusing on folate and glycan-based targeting and pH and external stimulus-responsive targeting. Well-known in cancer, folate targeting is currently attracting increasing antibacterial applications. Anticancer and antibacterial applications of nanoparticles used as agents for combining PDT with other therapies are discussed. These are some of the reassons why the World Health Organization identified PDT among promising new technologies for localized antibacterial treatments
Biography:
Prof Songca is the deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the University of waZuluNatal. He is serving at the HEQC of the CHE as a member of the NSRC. He qualified with a Ph.D. from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, in organic chemistry with a medicinal slant and has experience in this area spanning over three decades. He has attracted several research grants, so far in excess of R70 million. He has read more than 90 conference papers and published more than 110 articles as journal articles and book chapters. He is has graduated more than 25 postgraduate students, and is currently supervising 2 PhDs. He has lectured chemistry 25 between 1983-2008. He has been married to Reverend Nokulunga Patricia Songca for 40 years
