New Antimicrobial Agents and Non-invasive Drug Delivery Routes: A Look into the Future

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past few years, worldwide bacterial resistance to chemical antibiotics has increased dramatically and reached a “new pre-antibiotic era”, in such a high level that endangers public health. According to the World Alliance Against Antibiotic Resistance (WAAAR), antibiotics may completely lose their effectiveness in only a few years due to a combination of both self-medication and irrational prescription and use of these therapeutic agents, as well as due to their extensive use in agriculture, aquaculture and veterinary practice. This has led to the development of multi-resistant bacterial strains, and in fact, some of them are resistant to all currently available antibiotics. Hence, the need to develop feasible alternatives to antibiotics becomes more and more of utmost importance, so as to protect and promote global public health. Several (potential) alternative (or complement) antimicrobial strategies to current chemical antibiotics are under investigation, such as bacteriophage therapy (making use of strictly lytic phage particles), (recombinant) lysin therapy (at nanogram-scale, for infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria), antimicrobial peptides (amphiphilic polypeptides that disrupt the bacterial membrane), antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT, requiring the combination of a photosensitizer, visible light and molecular oxygen to produce reactive oxygen species that cause irreversible damages in microorganisms; due to the multitarget nature of aPDT, development of bacterial resistance is virtually nil). Additionally, the use of antibacterial antibodies promises to be extremely safe and effective, and vaccination emerges as one of the most promising preventive strategies. In addition, innovative non-invasive drug-delivery strategies for new antimicrobials, such as transdermal permeation, have the potential to circumvent the drawbacks associated with both enteric or parenteric administration, and have started to be studied by several researchers, revealing that this administration route may be worthy of further investigation. For instance, transdermal permeation of bacteriophage particles or other antimicrobial moieties has been successfully exploited in attempts to eradicate resistant chronic infections. This Special Issue aims to collect original contributions (research articles and reviews) describing and reporting recent advances and developments in the field of new antimicrobial strategies and non-invasive drug-delivery routes, either laboratory studies or clinical applications.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• strictly lytic bacteriophage particles
• antimicrobial photodynamic therapy
• design and synthesis of innovative antibacterial agents
• recombinant lysin therapy
• antimicrobial peptides
• antibacterial antibodies
• non-invasive strategies for antibacterial drug delivery
• mechanisms involved in the development of bacterial resistance
• resistance to bacteriophages
• mucosal delivery
• transdermal permeation

Prof. Dr. Victor M. Balcão
Guest Editor

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