Enhanced Antifungal Activity of WS<sub>2</sub>/ZnO Nanohybrid against <i>Candida albicans</i>
Vidhi K. Bhatt, Meswa Patel, Pratik M. Pataniya, Bragadish D. Iyer, C.K. Sumesh, Dattatray J. Late
Abstract
Candida albicans forms persistent infections through the formation of biofilms that confer resistance to existing antifungal drugs. Biofilm targeting is therefore a promising strategy to combat Candida albicans infections. The WS2/ZnO nanohybrids exhibits considerably improved antibiofilm activity and inhibited the biofilm formation by 91%, which is quite better than that for pristine WS2, which is only 74%. The physical blend prepared by mixing WS2 nanosheets and WS2/ZnO in the ratio of 70:30 showed an antibiofilm activity of 58%, which was intermediate to that observed for pristine materials. The as-synthesized nanohybrid also demonstrates dose-dependent antifungal activity as calculated using the disc diffusion test. WS2/ZnO nanohybrid shows 1.5 times higher activity compared to pristine WS2 nanosheets suggesting that the nanohybrid materials are more effective as novel antifungal materials.