Research progress on nanomaterials in promoting phage function and application
Yi Jin, Zhu Chen, Yiping Wang, Bingqing Xu, Mengye Ma, Jieting Pan, Xingyu Li, Qun Chen, Xibang Liu, Lijian Ding, Liming JiangABSTRACT
Phages, as viruses capable of specifically infecting and lysing bacteria, demonstrate significant therapeutic potential in addressing the escalating challenge of antibiotic resistance. However, their clinical application faces multiple limitations, including poor
IMPORTANCE
Despite increasing interest in phage-nanomaterial systems, the literature in this emerging field remains highly fragmented. Existing studies have explored various nanomaterials to address distinct limitations of phage therapy. These investigations have largely proceeded in parallel across different material platforms, including polymer nanomaterials, liposomes, metal nanomaterials, magnetic nanomaterials, and others, targeting functional outcomes such as stability, detection sensitivity, targeted delivery, and antibacterial efficacy, among others. A systematic synthesis that consolidates these scattered findings and provides a coherent framework across different enhancement strategies is currently lacking. This review contributes to addressing this gap by categorizing recent advances according to the enhanced phage function, summarizing key strategies and mechanisms reported to date, and offering an integrated reference to guide the rational design of phage-nanomaterial combination strategies.