Abstract
BackgroundNanomaterials that exhibit intrinsic enzyme-like characteristics have shown great promise as potential antibacterial agents. However, many of them exhibit inefficient antibacterial activity and biosafety problems that limit their usefulness. The development of new nanomaterials with good biocompatibility and rapid bactericidal effects is therefore highly desirable. Here, we show a new type of terbium oxide nanoparticles (Tb4O7 NPs) with intrinsic oxidase-like activity for in vitro and in vivo antibacterial application.ResultsWe find that Tb4O7 NPs can quickly oxidize a series of organic substrates in the absence of hydrogen peroxide. The oxidase-like capacity of Tb4O7 NPs allows these NPs to consume antioxidant biomolecules and generate reactive oxygen species to disable bacteria in vitro. Moreover, the in vivo experiments showed that Tb4O7 NPs are efficacious in wound-healing and are protective of normal tissues.ConclusionsOur results reveal that Tb4O7 NPs have intrinsic oxidase-like activity and show effective antibacterial ability both in vitro and in vivo. These findings demonstrate that Tb4O7 NPs are effective antibacterial agents and may have a potential application in wound healing.
Highlights
Nanomaterials that exhibit intrinsic enzyme-like characteristics have shown great promise as potential antibacterial agents
The physical characterization of terbium oxide (Tb4O7) NPs is shown in Additional file 1: Figure S1 and included images of particle core size and shape captured by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the mean and homogeneity of particle hydrodynamic size by dynamic light scattering (DLS), and particle absorption spectrum by UV–vis
Since we found that Tb4O7 NPs exhibit oxidase-like activity under acidic conditions, we speculate that the antibacterial mechanism of Tb4O7 NPs may arise from their oxidase activity to accelerate the process of bacterial cell oxidation and consumption of antioxidant biomolecules, leading to a reduction of oxygen products including hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) along with other antibacterial activity from the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS)
Summary
Nanomaterials that exhibit intrinsic enzyme-like characteristics have shown great promise as potential antibacterial agents. Over the past several years, a wide variety of nanomaterials, such as noble metals [9,10,11], metal oxides [12,13,14], and carbon nanomaterials [15,16,17,18], have been explored as potential nanozymes. Based on their intrinsic enzyme-like activity, several nanozymes have been used in antibacterial applications [19,20,21,22,23]. Platinum nanomaterials have shown effective antibacterial activity in the presence of hydrogen
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