Editorial: Metal organic frameworks for antimicrobial prevention and treatments

We have entered what is now referred to as the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) era, where resistance to existing antibiotics and antiseptics by bacteria has become increasing the norm. Unfortunately, the development of new antibiotics has declined as the rates of resistance increased. The WHO and the UN has defined this as the hidden pandemic and the greatest threat to human health and food security. To address this problem alternative approaches to traditional antibiotics are being explored that include but not limited to, antimicrobial peptides, bacteriophage, resistance inhibitors, vaccines, probiotics, natural plant compounds, CRISPR vectors etc. One approach has been to revisit metal elements, which were used as antimicrobials since antiquity and forgotten about with the discovery of antibiotics. Metal elements provide multifactorial killing on microbes (Lemire et al., 2013). The mode of delivery of metallo-antimicrobials may be as the metal salt, an alloy, organometallics, complexes, nanomaterial and of increasing interest, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) (Turner, 2023).