STTR Phase II: Antibacterially-Active Nanoparticles

This Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) research project develops a novel nanoparticle delivery system for treatment of antibiotic-resistant infections. This extends previous findings using antibacterially active polyacrylate nanoparticles to animal infection models. Penicillin containing nanoparticles are the intial focus due to the clinical importance of penicillin in treating bacterial infections and the extreme sensitivity penicillin has to degradation by proteins produced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The research will determine the stabilities of penicillin nanoparticles under various chemical and biological conditions, evaluate potential in vitro and in vivo toxicity of the nanoparticles, examine the biodistribution of the two most active nanoparticles in healthy mice, and assess the effectiveness in treating early stage (skin) and advanced (systemic) MRSA infections in mice. The results from this project will provide both fundamental data to the scientific community on these polyacrylate nanoparticles as a drug delivery platform, as well as animal testing data needed to advance this nanoparticle technology towards IND and FDA approval. The broader impact of this research will be to demonstrate that nanoparticle technology can be applied to treatment of MRSA infections and provide essential data on the use of polyacrylate nanoparticles as a drug delivery platform. Use of nanoparticles in anti-infectives is essentially unexplored. These novel nanoparticles will enable characterization of the properties for creating FDA guidelines on the use of nanoparticles in medicine. In addition, the training of students at the graduate and undergraduate level in bio-nanotechnology is a central element of this joint project between industry and academia. The precipitous loss in the ability of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections is already having enormous societal implications. The number of deaths and serious illnesses due to clinical complications from drug-resistant infections is staggering. This research will establish a new treatment protocol for these types of infections through use of cutting-edge nanotechnology, both as a drug-delivery platform and as an effective way to recover the therapeutic effectiveness of antibiotics like penicillin. There are currently no existing technologies like this in the anti-infectives area, indication of an unmet health need and a large commercial market.