Improving curcumin bactericidal potential against multi-drug resistant bacteria via its loading in polydopamine coated zinc-based metal–organic frameworks

Multi-drug resistant (MDR) bactearial strains have posed serious health issues, thus leading to a significant increase in mortality, morbidity, and the expensive treatment of infections. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), comprising metal ions and a variety of organic ligands, have been employed as an effective drug deliveryy vehicle due to their low toxicity, biodegradability, higher structural integrity and diverse surface functionalities. Polydopamine (PDA) is a versatile biocompatible polymer with several interesting properties, including the ability to adhere to biological surfaces. As a result, modifying drug delivery vehicles with PDA has the potential to improve their antimicrobial properties. This work describes the preparation of PDA-coated Zn-MOFs for improving curcumin’s antibacterial properties against S. aureus and E. coli. Powder X-ray diffraction (P-XRD), FT-IR, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and DLS were utilized to characterize PDA-coated Zn-MOFs. The curcumin loading and in vitro release of the prepared MOFs were also examined. Finally, the MOFs were tested for bactericidal ability against E. coli and S. aureus using an anti-bacterial assay and surface morphological analysis. Smaller size MOFs were capable of loading and releasing curcumin. The findings showed that as curcumin was encapsulated into PDA-coated MOFs, its bactericidal potential was significantly enhanced, and the findings were further supported by SEM which indicated the complete morphological distortion of the bacteria after treatment with PDA-Cur-Zn-MOFs. These studies clearly indicate that the PDA-Cur-Zn-MOFs developed in this study are extremely promising for long-term release of drugs to treat a wide range of microbial infections.