title: Antimicrobial peptides: their physicochemical properties and therapeutic application.
abstract: Antibiotic resistance has become a global public health problem, thus there is a need to develop a new class of antibiotics. Natural antimicrobial peptides have got an increasing attention as potential therapeutic agents. Antimicrobial peptides are small cationic peptides with broad antimicrobial activity. They can serve as critical defense molecules protecting the host from the invasion of bacteria. Even though they possess a different mode of action compared to traditional antibiotics, antimicrobial peptides couldn't go into the drug markets because of problems in application such as toxicity, susceptibility to proteolysis, manufacturing cost, size, and molecular size. Nevertheless, antimicrobial peptides can be new hope in developing novel, effective and safe therapeutics without antibiotic resistance. Thus, it is necessary to discover new antimicrobial sources in nature and study their structures and physicochemical properties more in depth.
authors.affiliation: Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea.
authors.forename: Su-Jin
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: Do-Hee
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Tsogbadrakh
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mishig-Ochir
authors.forename: Bong-Jin
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000737:chemistry / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000737:chemistry / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000382:microbiology; D015195:Drug Design; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides