Metal Nanoparticle-Based Biosensors for the Early Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases Caused by ESKAPE Pathogens in the Fight against the Antimicrobial-Resistance Crisis

Abstract

The species included in the ESKAPE group (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the genus Enterobacter) have a high capacity to develop antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a health problem that is already among the leading causes of death and could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. The generation of new potentially therapeutic molecules has been insufficient to combat the AMR “crisis”, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that it will seek to promote the development of rapid diagnostic strategies. The physicochemical properties of metallic nanoparticles (MNPs) have made it possible to design biosensors capable of identifying low concentrations of ESKAPE bacteria in the short term; other systems identify antimicrobial susceptibility, and some have been designed with dual activity in situ (bacterial detection and antimicrobial activity), which suggests that, in the near future, multifunctional biosensors could exist based on MNPs capable of quickly identifying bacterial pathogens in clinical niches might become commercially available. This review focuses on the use of MNP-based systems for the rapid and accurate identification of clinically important bacterial pathogens, exhibiting the necessity for exhaustive research to achieve these objectives. This review focuses on the use of metal nanoparticle-based systems for the rapid and accurate identification of clinically important bacterial pathogens.