Selenium Silk Nanostructured Films with Antifungal and Antibacterial Activity.

ABSTRACT: The rapid emergence of drug-resistant bacteria and fungi poses a threat for healthcare worldwide. The development of novel effective small molecule therapeutic strategies in this space has remained challenging. Therefore, one orthogonal approach is to explore biomaterials with physical modes of action that have the potential to generate antimicrobial activity and, in some cases, even prevent antimicrobial resistance. Here, to this effect, we describe an approach for forming silk-based films that contain embedded selenium nanoparticles. We show that these materials exhibit both antibacterial and antifungal properties while crucially also remaining highly biocompatible and noncytotoxic toward mammalian cells. By incorporating the nanoparticles into silk films, the protein scaffold acts in a

SUBMITTER: Toprakcioglu Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9982822 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature