Nanocarriers for the Delivery of Antimicrobial Agents to Fight Resistance Mechanisms

The slogan of the World Health Day in 2011 was "Antimicrobial resistance: no action today no cure tomorrow". The EU has published her Action Plan in 2011 against the rising threats from antimicrobial resistance. Developing new antibiotics is mandatory but takes years. A short-term alternative is the development of novel strategies to deliver existing drugs in an optimized way. In this frame, the use of engineered antibiotic nanocarriers is one of the most promising options. The objectives of the ITN project Cyclonhit are to take full advantage of nanotechnology and of the high level interdisciplinary expertise of the partners to efficiently encapsulate antibiotics in nanocarriers to kill both intracellular and extracellular bacteria. This will be accomplished through a training program for 11 Early Stage and 5 Experienced Researchers that will gather interdisciplinary expertise of 11 Full partners and 6 Associated partners, of which 7 are SMEs. The final goal of the Cyclonhit project is to bring to preclinical studies an antibiotic formulation for the treatment of TB and tailored alternative therapeutic approaches for other MDR microorganisms. The large impact will arise from: i) the immediate research results, that will potentially benefit the competitiveness of the European healthcare sector through novel new nanosystems; ii) the involvement of a wide range of partners from academia and private sectors and iii) the training of a large number of skilled professionals to work on applications of nanotechnology in medicine.