Evolving Technologies and Strategies for Combating Antibacterial Resistance in the Advent of the Postantibiotic Era

The threats posed by the impending “postantibiotic era” have put forward urgent challenges to be overcome by providing new diagnostic and therapeutic regimes for improved diagnosis and treatment of bacterial infections. Antibiotic resistance and incurable bacterial infections are especially important in a society faced with rapid demographic changes. With very few new antibiotics in the drug development pipeline, not being able to match the pace of antimicrobial resistance evolution, developments within other fields such as materials sciences and medical technologies are required to realize innovative antibacterial approaches. This progress report presents recent advances in especially nanotechnology‐based approaches and their concomitant use with complementary antibacterial treatments. Synergistically improved antibacterial activity can be reached by considering novel, promising approaches such as photodynamic and photothermal therapy as well as cold atmospheric pressure treatments as complementary strategies to fight against antibacterial resistance. Moreover, this report describes how these novel technologies can be further improved especially by integration of nanomaterials into the currently applied single modal strategies against bacterial infections. The rise in antibiotic resistance concomitant to the lack of new antibiotic drugs calls for alternative strategies to fight bacterial infections. Medical technologies integrated with novel material developments could be the answer to these challenges. Nanotechnological approaches alone, e.g., in the form of “nanoantibiotics” or together with phototherapy and plasma medicine, can contribute to the prevention, detection, and therapy of infections.