Dual nanomaterial systems aiming antimicrobial activity and cancer treatment

Abstract

In the 21st century, nanotechnology has been emerging as a very promising field, with numerous applications in distinct areas, such as textiles, food agriculture, environment, electronics and in the biomedical field. Among the different categories of nanomaterials, zeolites are a very important class of inorganic materials that have been used in a wide range of applications. In the current work, we used zeolite NaY as host to incorporate silver ions and the antineoplastic drug 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) for microbial infections and nonmelanoma skin cancer treatment, respectively. Both situations present a major threat to public health: microbial infections due to their increasing resistance to antibiotics and cancer because of the difficulty of an efficient treatment especially when the disease has progressed considerably. So, since zeolites have a range of structural and physical properties that make them suitable for therapeutic delivery systems, they could be interesting candidates for this purpose. Our goal is to create an efficient and biocompatible dual topical delivery system with zeolites and, this way, combine the antimicrobial and the antineoplastic activity in the same formulation.