Bacterial infections still remain as one of the most serious threat to human health. The widespread use of antibiotics has created bacterial evolutionary adaptation, leading ultimately to the so-called multidrug resistance (MDR). The consequence of the increasing resistance of bacterial strains to biocidal agents is an increasing risk of chronic infections and difficulties in their treatment (i.e. wound infections, osteomyelitis, septic arthritis, endocarditis, etc.). Antibiotic therapies, in case of chronic bacterial infections, are very limited. Due to the ease of pathogens spread multidrug resistance has become a global problem¹.

Extensive efforts should be made to find effective antimicrobial agents with low toxicity to the host cell and a broad spectrum towards a wide variety of bacterial pathogens². It is equally important to develop effective delivery systems that integrate existing antibiotics and/or other biocidal agents with novel drug delivery systems to promote their antimicrobial activity.

Present study concerns alginate/chitosan beads constructed of polymeric core loaded with antibiotic (e.g. ciprofloxacin) and polymeric shell prone for further lytic enzyme immobilization. Due to stable and uniform core-shell beads formation diverse synthetic approaches were carried out. Preliminary physicochemical characterization of obtained materials was performed: size and zeta potential were determined by dynamic light scattering technique (DLS), particles shape and morphology were investigated with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), drug loading efficiency and cumulative drug release profiles were evaluated with UV-Vis spectrophotometry.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by Polish Foundation of Science within POMOST project  “Alginate/chitosan core-shell beads with bioactive functionalities” (POMOST/2013-7/7).

[1]           WHO. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs194/en/ 2014.

[2]           Regiel, A.; Irusta, S.; Kyzioł, A.; Arruebo, M.; Santamaria, J. Nanotechnology 2013, 24, (1),       015101.

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