Antimicrobial peptides: Therapeutic potential as an alternative to conventional antibiotics

Abstract

Antibiotics are among the most important class of therapeutics to treat life threatening diseases, however, the emergence of multi-drug resistance bacteria is a serious threat to public health. Since conventional antibiotics are becoming resistant to all approved antimicrobial drugs, there is an urgent need to find alternative therapeutic agents. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are naturally occurring host peptides produced by various organisms, as part of the non-specific immune response to defend against microbes. They have received great attention serving as a new class of antimicrobial agents, to counter multidrug resistance because of their broad spectrum activities against microorganism and low propensity to develop resistance. By focusing on developing optimized peptide designs using computer assisted approaches and applying advanced bioinformatic tools to consider factors such as peptides physical stability in physiological condition, and reduced toxicity to host cells, AMP can fulfill in the future as promising next generation antibiotics to fight drug resistant bacteria.