Abstract
As an acute ophthalmic infection, bacterial keratitis (BK) can lead to severe visual morbidity, such as corneal perforation, intraocular infection, and permanent corneal opacity, if rapid and effective treatments are not available. In addition to eradicating pathogenic bacteria, protecting corneal tissue from oxidative damage and promoting wound healing by relieving inflammation are equally critical for the efficient treatment of BK. Besides, it is very necessary to improve the bioavailability of drugs by enhancing the ocular surface adhesion and corneal permeability. In this investigation, therefore, a synergistic antibiotic-antioxidant treatment of BK was achieved based on multifunctional block copolymer vesicles, within which ciprofloxacin (CIP) was simultaneously encapsulated during the self-assembly. Due to the phenylboronic acid residues in the corona layer, these vesicles exhibited enhanced muco-adhesion, deep corneal epithelial penetration, and bacteria-targeting, which facilitated the drug delivery to corneal bacterial infection sites. Additionally, the abundant thioether moieties in the hydrophobic membrane enabled the vesicles to both have ROS-scavenging capacity and accelerated CIP release at the inflammatory corneal tissue. In vivo experiments on a mice model demonstrated that the multifunctional polymer vesicles achieved efficient treatment of BK, owing to the enhanced corneal adhesion and penetration, bacteria targeting, ROS-triggered CIP release, and the combined antioxidant-antibiotic therapy. This synergistic strategy holds great potential in the treatment of BK and other diseases associated with bacterial infections.