title: Designing antimicrobial peptides: form follows function.
abstract: Multidrug-resistant bacteria are a severe threat to public health. Conventional antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective as a result of resistance, and it is imperative to find new antibacterial strategies. Natural antimicrobials, known as host defence peptides or antimicrobial peptides, defend host organisms against microbes but most have modest direct antibiotic activity. Enhanced variants have been developed using straightforward design and optimization strategies and are being tested clinically. Here, we describe advanced computer-assisted design strategies that address the difficult problem of relating primary sequence to peptide structure, and are delivering more potent, cost-effective, broad-spectrum peptides as potential next-generation antibiotics.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Microbial Diseases and Immunity Research, University of British Columbia, 2259 Lower Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada.
authors.forename: Christopher D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Fjell
authors.forename: Jan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Hiss
authors.forename: Robert E W
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Hancock
authors.forename: Gisbert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000138:chemical synthesis*; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000138:chemical synthesis*; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods; D015195:Drug Design; D024901:Drug Resistance, Multiple, Bacterial / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides