System and Method for Antibiotic Delivery Using Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

摘要

A new route is shown for antibiotic delivery in fighting drug resistant infections. Nanotubes and antibiotics and complexed non-covalently, with no chemical bonding, but through adsorption of antibiotics onto the nanotube surface governed by sufficiently strong molecular attraction between hydrophobic systems of the two. This allows the antibiotics to be freed from the nanotubes more easily as they reach the cell membrane. When antibiotics are introduced with nanotubes in this manner, bacterial resistance is mitigated by nanotube transport potentially into the membrane of the bacteria. Nanotubes used in this way help to overcome antibiotic resistance.