ReviewPost-screenHow can nanoparticles contribute to antituberculosis therapy?

- Nanoparticles can be used for improving drug efficacy in every field of medicine.
- Nanoparticles can have direct antimycobacterial potency or can be carriers of TB drugs.
- Each TB drug and drug combination requires a dedicated nanoparticle as a carrier.

Therapeutic approaches using nanoparticles are being successfully used in foods and in several fields of medicine, including infectious diseases. Regarding tuberculosis (TB) treatment, nanoparticles can be a useful strategy for two distinct applications: (i) for their intrinsic antimycobacterial activity; (ii) as vehicles for known antitubercular drugs to allow reduction of dose- and drug-associated side-effects and administration via user-friendly administration routes such as pulmonary or oral ones. Promising results were obtained in vitro and in animal Mycobacterium tuberculosis models and need now to be translated into clinical drug candidates. Such a prospect can provide an opportunity regarding the current limited therapeutic options for drug-resistant TB and the scarcity of novel antituberculosis drugs in the drug discovery pipeline.