THE CURRENT STATE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF NANOPARTICLES FOR USE AGAINST BACTERIAL GASTROINTESTINAL PATHOGENS

Gastrointestinal diseases have a huge impact especially in third world countries, making it urgent to seek new effective antimicrobial therapies. Thus, the study of new antimicrobial solutions has been the target of research over the past years. The development of nanoparticles (NPs) with natural bioactive compounds exhibiting antimicrobial activity may be promising to overcome the problems associated with antibiotic resistance caused by many pathogenic bacteria. In addition, the phenolic compounds are a class of bioactive compounds for which their antimicrobial activity was already tested on the production of NPs. Polymeric or lipidic NPs systems have been investigated to deliver these compounds. As example, chitosan is a polymer widely known for their properties, especially its unique antimicrobial activity and its ability to adhere to intestinal epithelium. In this presentation the discussion of the recent developments of new delivery systems for phenolic compounds with antimicrobial activity against gastrointestinal pathogens, their production processes, activities, focusing on NPs produced using chitosan as the main structural and functional material including case studies will be made.