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Nanovehicles in the improved treatment of infections due to brain-eating amoebae

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Abstract

Pathogenic free-living amoebae are known to cause fatal central nervous system infections with extremely high mortality rates. High selectivity of the blood–brain barrier hampers delivery of drugs and untargeted delivery of drugs can cause severe side effects. Nanovehicles can be used for targeted drug delivery across the blood–brain barrier. Inorganic nanoparticles have been explored as carriers for various biomedical applications and can be modified with various ligands for efficient targeting and cell selectivity while lipid-based nanoparticles have been extensively used in the development of both precision and colloidal nanovehicles. Nanomicelles and polymeric nanoparticles can also serve as nanocarriers and may be modified so that responsiveness of the nanoparticles and release of the loads are linked to specific stimuli. These nanoparticles are discussed here in the context of the treatment of central nervous system infections due to pathogenic amoebae. It is anticipated that these novel strategies can be utilized in tandem with novel drug leads currently in the pipeline and yield in the development of much needed treatments against these devastating parasites.

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Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants. This article does not contain any studies involving animals.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to University of Sharjah, UAE for supporting this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Sharjah, 27272, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

    Mohammad Ridwane Mungroo & Naveed Ahmed Khan

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, School of Medical and Life Sciences, Sunway University, Subang Jaya 47500, Selangor, Malaysia

    Ayaz Anwar

  3. College of Arts and Sciences, American University of Sharjah, 26666, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

    Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui

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  1. Mohammad Ridwane Mungroo
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  2. Naveed Ahmed Khan
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  3. Ayaz Anwar
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  4. Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui
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RS and NAK conceived the study amid discussion with MRM, and AA. MRM conducted literature search under the supervision of RS and NAK. MRM and RS prepared the first draft. NAK and AA corrected the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Naveed Ahmed Khan.

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Mungroo, M.R., Khan, N.A., Anwar, A. et al. Nanovehicles in the improved treatment of infections due to brain-eating amoebae. Int Microbiol 25, 225–235 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-021-00201-0

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