The increasing resistance of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi, to antimicrobials and antiseptics is critical in modern medicine and biology. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) highlights that healthcare-associated infections, predominantly caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria, remain a significant public health threat. This underscores the urgent need to explore alternative therapeutic strategies that operate via completely different mechanisms. One such promising approach is antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT), which utilizes biocompatible photosensitizers (PSs) to combat infections effectively. The aPDT leverages PS that can be activated by visible light to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) that induce oxidative damage, causing irreversible destruction of microbial cells. Unlike traditional antimicrobial agents, the major advantage of aPDT lies in its low likelihood of inducing microbial resistance.3 This makes it a highly attractive alternative in combating resistant pathogens. Despite its growing clinical recognition for treating cancer and infectious diseases, a largely untapped application of aPDT is the swift, potent, and sustained inactivation of microorganisms and viruses on various surfaces—whether in households, industrial environments, or healthcare settings. Boron-dipyrromethene (BODIPY) and porphyrin compounds stand out among the most promising PS candidates for aPDT, thanks to their high biocompatibility, strong light absorption, excellent photostability, fluorescence emission, and efficient generation of singlet oxygen (¹O2). However, their propensity to aggregate via π-π stacking interactions can quench their excited states, reducing their ROS-generating capacity. To overcome these challenges, we propose using 3D icosahedral boron clusters (BCs) that have demonstrated antimicrobial activity to disrupt these π-π interactions.
We hypothesize that linking boron clusters to Bodipy and porphyrin cores could develop effective photosensitizer agents for aPDT. This approach takes advantage of the boron clusters' ability to prevent molecular aggregation, their antimicrobial properties, and the capability of these PSs to generate singlet oxygen.
The main objective of this project is to develop efficient, biocompatible, boron-cluster-containing BODIPY-based photosensitizers as promising agents for aPDT.
The most effective antibacterial photosensitizers could help combat nosocomial infections by inactivating microorganisms on medical instruments and devices.
