Publications

Treating bacterial biofilms remains a major clinical challenge, particularly in uropathogenic infections where the dense extracellular matrix impedes antibiotic access and protects tolerant bacterial populations. In this work, we explored a nanomaterial-based strategy to improve antibiotic responsiveness by combining iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) with pulsed laser irradiation to induce vapor nanobubble (VNB)-mediated disruption of a mature flow-grown uropathogenic E. coli CFT073 biofilm. We tested three nanoparticle sizes (70 nm, 130 nm, and 500 nm) and identified IONP500 as the most effective formulation for generating VNBs upon irradiation with 532 nm nanosecond laser pulses, with a VNB threshold of 0.56 J/cm2 per pulse. In the mature biofilm model, the combined IONP500 + ciprofloxacin + laser treatment significantly enhanced antibiotic activity compared with ciprofloxacin alone, increasing dead biomass from approximately 16% to 23%, corresponding to a 39-45% relative increase, as quantified by COMSTAT analysis and one-way ANOVA with Tukey's post-hoc test. The combined treatment also reduced total biofilm biomass and increased biofilm porosity by 55.8% compared with ciprofloxacin alone, supporting a mechanism based on VNB-mediated matrix disruption and improved antibiotic access. Overall, these results support the use of photothermally active, biocompatible IONPs as a promising complementary strategy to enhance the efficacy of conventional antibiotics against persistent biofilm-associated infections.

JTD Keywords: Cells, Ciprofloxacin potentiation, Iron oxide nanoparticles, Laser, Nanoparticles, Photoporation, Photothermal biofilm disruption, Prostate, Resistance, Transurethral resection, Uropathogenic biofilms, Vapor nanobubbles, Vaporization

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells have made significant advancements in the field of adoptive immune cell therapies and the treatment of hematological malignancies. However, there are several drawbacks associated with the production and administration of these therapies. As a result, there has been interest in using natural killer (NK) cells to develop allogeneic CAR-NK cell therapies instead. While viral transduction is powerful for engineering T cells, NK cells have shown limited efficacy and high toxicity with this method. Therefore, efforts are being made to optimize non-viral transfection technologies for engineering NK cells. One such emerging technology is photoporation, which has demonstrated high efficiency and versatility for transfecting different immune cells. In this study, we evaluated the potential of nanoparticle-sensitized photoporation for genetic engineering of NK cells. Our findings show that both FD500 and eGFP mRNA can be successfully delivered into NK-92MI cells with high efficiency and low toxicity. When compared to state-of-the-art electroporation, photoporation proved to be more efficient, gentle, and capable of preserving the phenotype of NK-92MI cells. Overall, our work highlights the promising prospects of photoporation for NK cell engineering.

JTD Keywords: Cancer immunotherapie, Car, Cell engineering, Deliver, Messenger-rna, Nanoparticles, Natural killer cells, Natural-killer-cells, Photoporation, Polydopamine nanoparticles, T-cells

JTD Keywords: Extracellular vesicle, Photoporation, Pre-formation loadin