Antimicrobial Peptides for Therapeutic Applications: A Review

Molecules

Min-Duk Seo¹  Hyung-Sik Won²  Ji-Hun Kim⁴  Tsogbadrakh Mishig-Ochir³ 

[1] College of Pharmacy, Ajou University, Suwon 443-749, Korea;Department of Biotechnology, College of Biomedical and Health Science, Konkuk University, Chungju, Chungbuk 380-701, Korea;Faculty of Biology, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar Box 377, Mongolia;Center for Structural Biology and Departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37232, USA

关键词: antimicrobial peptides (AMPs);    antibiotics;    structure-activity relationship (SAR);   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules171012276

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been considered as potential therapeutic sources of future antibiotics because of their broad-spectrum activities and different mechanisms of action compared to conventional antibiotics. Although AMPs possess considerable benefits as new generation antibiotics, their clinical and commercial development still have some limitations, such as potential toxicity, susceptibility to proteases, and high cost of peptide production. In order to overcome those obstacles, extensive efforts have been carried out. For instance, unusual amino acids or peptido-mimetics are introduced to avoid the proteolytic degradation and the design of short peptides retaining antimicrobial activities is proposed as a solution for the cost issue. In this review, we focus on small peptides, especially those with less than twelve amino acids, and provide an overview of the relationships between their three-dimensional structures and antimicrobial activities. The efforts to develop highly active AMPs with shorter sequences are also described.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.