Research progress on nanomaterials in promoting phage function and application.

Phages, as viruses capable of specifically infecting and lysing bacteria, demonstrate significant therapeutic potential in addressing the escalating challenge of antibiotic resistance. However, their clinical application faces multiple limitations, including poor in vivo stability, rapid clearance by the immune system, narrow host range, induction of bacterial resistance, limited efficacy against biofilms, and intracellular bacteria, which severely constrain therapeutic outcomes. Traditional formulation approaches are insufficient to overcome these challenges, making it crucial to explore novel strategies that enhance phage functionality. In recent years, nanomaterials have emerged as innovative solutions through their unique physicochemical properties, offering new perspectives for optimizing phage therapy. This review systematically summarizes and evaluates the latest research progress on various nanomaterials in enhancing phage stability, detection sensitivity, targeted delivery efficiency, and antibacterial efficacy, aiming to provide theoretical references and practical insights for overcoming existing limitations in phage therapy and developing more effective and reliable phage-nanomaterial combination antimicrobial strategies.IMPORTANCEDespite increasing interest in phage-nanomaterial systems, the literature in this emerging field remains highly fragmented. Existing studies have explored various nanomaterials to address distinct limitations of phage therapy. These investigations have largely proceeded in parallel across different material platforms, including polymer nanomaterials, liposomes, metal nanomaterials, magnetic nanomaterials, and others, targeting functional outcomes such as stability, detection sensitivity, targeted delivery, and antibacterial efficacy, among others. A systematic synthesis that consolidates these scattered findings and provides a coherent framework across different enhancement strategies is currently lacking. This review contributes to addressing this gap by categorizing recent advances according to the enhanced phage function, summarizing key strategies and mechanisms reported to date, and offering an integrated reference to guide the rational design of phage-nanomaterial combination strategies.