Asian Journal of Advances in Research

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) represents one of the most profound threats to global public health, with drug-resistant bacterial infections estimated to have caused 1.27 million direct deaths globally in 2019 and contributed to nearly five million further fatalities. The progressive failure of conventional antibiotics, driven by decades of overuse and a near-stagnant discovery pipeline, has catalysed the search for radically different therapeutic paradigms. This narrative review synthesises evidence across four transformative domains — bacteriophage therapy, CRISPR-Cas-based antimicrobials, nanotechnology-mediated drug delivery, and artificial intelligence — and examines how their convergence may define the frontier of precision antimicrobial medicine. Bacteriophages offer exquisite host specificity and can be engineered to circumvent bacterial resistance mechanisms; CRISPR-Cas systems enable sequence-specific targeting of resistance genes and virulence determinants within living bacterial cells; engineered nanoparticles provide sophisticated delivery vehicles capable of penetrating biofilms and concentrating antimicrobial payloads at infection sites; and artificial intelligence accelerates the discovery of novel antimicrobial compounds, the prediction of resistance emergence, and the computational design of therapeutic phages. Collectively, these technologies address the fundamental limitations of conventional antibiotics — broad-spectrum collateral damage, inability to clear biofilms, and susceptibility to resistance — whilst offering new degrees of therapeutic precision. This review maps the current evidence base for each technology, explores their synergistic integration, and discusses the regulatory, ethical, and equity challenges that must be resolved before precision antimicrobial medicine can be delivered equitably at scale.