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Perspectives on and Need to Develop New Infection Control Strategies

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Racing for the Surface

Abstract

Bacterial infections by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens threaten to become the number one cause of death in 2050. Therewith the optimism about infection control that arose after the discovery of antibiotics has come to an end and new infection control strategies are direly needed. Development of new antibiotics is generally considered unlikely. In this chapter, a likelihood perspective is given, for the possibilities offered by combination and smart encapsulation of existing antibiotics, use of probiotics and phage therapy, antimicrobial peptides and nanotechnology-based antimicrobials. Combination of existing antibiotics with probiotics, antimicrobial peptides, or nanotechnology-based antimicrobials may also have good perspectives for clinical infection control, also when caused by antimicrobial-resistant strains. Therewith, existing antibiotics may still be useful for several decades to come despite the occurrence of antibiotic resistance, provided further research and development of the above strategies are focused on their downward clinical translation, carried out collaboratively within academia and industry, rather than on developing and publishing yet another, new antimicrobial compound.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21620102005, 91527306, 51390483). HJB is director-owner of a consulting company, SASA BV. The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to authorship and/or publication of this chapter. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which have improved the presentation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Yong Liu, Henny C. van der Mei & Henk J. Busscher

  2. State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, Ministry of Education, Institute of Polymer Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, PR China

    Linqi Shi

  3. State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Technology of the Ministry of Education, Department of Microbiology, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, PR China

    Weihui Wu

  4. Department of Orthodontics, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Yijin Ren

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  1. Yong Liu
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  6. Henk J. Busscher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henk J. Busscher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopaedics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Bingyun Li

  2. Microbiology Lab, AO Research Institute Davos, Davos Platz, Graubünden, Switzerland

    Thomas Fintan Moriarty

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Thomas Webster

  4. Engineering and Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

    Malcolm Xing

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Liu, Y., Shi, L., van der Mei, H.C., Wu, W., Ren, Y., Busscher, H.J. (2020). Perspectives on and Need to Develop New Infection Control Strategies. In: Li, B., Moriarty, T., Webster, T., Xing, M. (eds) Racing for the Surface. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34475-7_5

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