Carbon dots as bioactive antifungal nanomaterials

Nowadays, the widespread diffusion of infections caused by opportunistic fungi represents a demanding threat for global health security. This phenomenon has also worsened by the emergence of contagious events in hospitalisation environments and by the fact that many fungi have developed harsh and serious resistance mechanisms to the traditional antimycotic drugs. Hence, the design of novel antifungal agents is a key factor to counteract mycotic infections and resistance. Within this context, nanomaterials are gaining increasing attention thanks to their biocidal character. Among these, carbon dots (CDs) represent a class of zero-dimensional, photoluminescent and quasi-spherical nanoparticles which, for their great and tuneable features, have found applications in catalysis, sensing and biomedicine. Nevertheless, only a few works define and recapitulate their antifungal properties. Therefore, we aim to give an overview about the recent advances in the synthesis of CDs active against infective fungi. We described the general features of CDs and fungal cells, by highlighting some of the most common antimycotic mechanisms. Then, we evaluated the effects of CDs, antimicrobial drugs-loaded CDs and CDs-incorporated packaging systems on different fungi and analysed the use of CDs as fluorescent nano-trackers for bioimaging, showing, to all effects, their promising application as antifungal agents.