Precision Drug Delivery to Tackle Antibiotic Resistance

Introduction

Antibiotics once thought to be the boon for human health are now getting resistant against most of the deadly pathogens with a tremendous pace. It demands serious concern as increasing antibacterial resistance has become threat for the human civilization (Uddin et al., 2021; Aslam et al., 2018). Most alarming situation is the swift development of multidrug resistance due to frequent and irrational use of antibiotics for human health, animals and agriculturewhich imposes serious burden towards the health. Although starting from penicillin to the currently utilized antibiotics this field has witnessed numerous developments with time but constant and suboptimal exposure of antibiotics resulted in the evolution of resistant bacterial strain over time. Bacteria adopt various mechanisms to develop resistance which help them toescape easily from the action of antibiotics. Drug efflux mechanisms, inactivation of drug molecules, increase in the cell wall thickness and modification of target proteins are the major mechanisms inducing drug resistance (Reygaert, 2018; Peterson & Kaur, 2018). World health organization has also warned about the dangers of increasing antibacterial resistance. It has been estimated that if suitable alternatives would not be taken timely then the toll of this burden would engulf the lives of 10 million people on yearly basis till the end of 2050. Development of newer antibacterial molecules is a difficult and time-consuming process and undoubtedly the similar utilization strategies which are currently being employed for the existing ones would again result in the same scenario. Therefore, there is an urgent need of some effective alternative approaches with which the effectiveness of antibiotics in hands can be enhanced (Rios et al., 2016; Ayukekbong et al., 2017; Laws et al., 2019). Targeted drug delivery approaches which come under the realm of novel drug delivery systems holds enough potentialto overcome this emerging problem due to theirunmatched targeting efficiencies to the sites of interest with programmed rate of drug delivery. The concept of targetingfinds its roots from the work of one of the renowned scientists of his time Paul Ehrlich who pioneered the concept of “Magic Bullets”. Long ago Paul Ehrlich envisaged the concept of targeting pathogens with magic bullets without harming the host cells (Tewabe et al., 2021; Sokka et al., 2019; Prathapan, 2023). He believed that wonders can be achieved if substances or drugs would possess selectivity towards bacteria rather than host to achieve maximum outcomes without experiencing drug toxicity.