Antimicrobial resistance is a recognized global challenge. Tools for bacterial detection can combat antimicrobial resistance by facilitating evidence-based antibiotic prescribing, thus avoiding their overprescription, which contributes to the spread of resistance. Unfortunately, traditional culture-based identification methods take at least a day, while emerging alternatives are limited by high cost and a requirement for skilled operators. Moreover, photodynamic inactivation of bacteria promoted by photosensitisers could be considered as one of the most promising strategies in the fight against multidrug resistance pathogens. In this context, carbon dots (CDs) have been identified as a promising class of photosensitiser nanomaterials for the specific detection and inactivation of different bacterial species. CDs possess exceptional and tuneable chemical and photoelectric properties that make them excellent candidates for antibacterial theranostic applications, such as great chemical stability, high water solubility, low toxicity and excellent biocompatibility. In this review, we will summarize the most recent advances on the use of CDs as antimicrobial agents, including the most commonly used methodologies for CD and CD/composites syntheses and their antibacterial properties in both in vitro and in vivo models developed in the last 3 years.

Carbon-based functional nanomaterials with distinct photoluminescent properties have gained significant attention for their diverse applications in bioimaging, biomedicine, and antimicrobial treatments. Among these, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as promising fluorescent nanomaterials due to their inherent photoluminescence properties, high stability, water solubility, ease of functionalization, biocompatibility, and low synthetic cost. Many strategies have been developed for their synthesis, utilizing a myriad of carbon precursors from small molecules to bulk or waste materials, which influence their structural and photoluminescent properties. Their fluorescence emission and functionality can be tuned through heteroatom doping, surface modifications, and reaction conditions, making them highly tunable nanomaterials suitable for applications in sensing, catalysis, anticancer and antimicrobial treatments, and biomedical imaging. This review explores various types of synthesized CDs, their structural features, and their applications in fungal bioimaging, antifungal therapies, and protective food packaging to demonstrate their potential in combating fungal resistance and contamination challenges.

This review highlights the recent achievements in the field of carbon-based multivalent glyco-nanoplatforms with biological applications.

Carbon dot-labelled antibody for human brain tissue immunofluorescent staining.

We report the design, synthesis, immunological evaluation, and conformational analysis of new saponin variants as promising vaccine adjuvants. These studies have provided expedient synthetic access to streamlined adjuvant-active saponins and yielded molecular-level insights into saponin conformation that correlated with their in vivo adjuvant activities.