Photothermal lysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa by polyaniline nanoparticles under near infrared irradiation

SILVESTRE BONGIOVANNI ABEL; LUCAS A GALLARATO; MARTA S DARDANELLI; CÉSAR A BARBERO; CLAUDIA R RIVAROLA; EDITH I YSLAS

Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express

IOP publishing

Año: 2018 vol. 4 p. 1 - 10

2057-1976

Increases in the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria require new approaches for the treatment ofinfectious bacterial pathogens. A new therapeutic modality, which is called photothermal therapy(PTT) involves the absorption of Near Infrared Radiation (NIR) light by absorbing species(e.g.polyaniline nanoparticles) and transfer of the absorbed energy into the surrounding environment asheat that could cause pathogen death. Since the pathogen cells, and the surrounding tissue, does notabsorb NIR radiation, an agent which strongly absorb the light has to be added. In this work, wereperformed experiments to determine if polyaniline nanoparticles(PANI-NP) in combination withNIR irradiation could be used to destroy Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Results reveal that thisnanomaterial, following NIR exposure could be used for killing bacteria because it was observed asignificant decrease in cell viability triggering cell death. In addition, the cell death mechanism wasobserved by DNA fragmentation.