Poly(O-Phenylenediamine)/ Montmorillonite Nanocomposites: A Novel Strategy to Arrest Bacterial Pathogens Infestation

Abstract This work is an extension to our previous work. Montmorillonite/poly(o-phenylenediamine) (MMT/POPD) Nanocomposites (NC) were synthesized by Riaz et al. 2016 and evaluated for the antimicrobial potential. Antibacterial potential of NC were investigated by the broth microdilution and agar well diffusion methods. Further, effective concentration (EC50) and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the NC were determined. Intercalation and in-situ polymerization of POPD within MMT was successfully obtained using sonochemical technique. The TEM micrograph of MMT/POPD and POPD/MMT confirmed the size in the range of 20-90 nm and the shape observed was spherical (Riaz et al. 2016). The NC was then checked for antimicrobial activity against four bacterial strains and they showed potent antibacterial activity in both broth and on agar plate. Quantitative test in liquid media clearly showed that NC had viable cells reduction ability for testing strains. Results obtained here concluded that the NC can prevent the infestation of various bacterial pathogens effectively. Therefore, we propose that they are useful as effective and non-cytotoxic biologically active agents and can be used as nanocarriers with dual role i.e. in addition to carrying drugs, carrier will itself act as antibacterial agent. This dual nature of NC could be an alternative to target multi-drug resistant bacterial strains and can further be explored for their mode of action against bacterial pathogens.