title: Antimicrobial peptides: therapeutic potentials.
abstract: The increasing appearance of multidrug-resistant pathogens has created an urgent need for suitable alternatives to current antibiotics. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which act as defensive weapons against microbes, have received great attention because of broad-spectrum activities, unique action mechanisms and rare antibiotic-resistant variants. Despite desirable characteristics, they have shown limitations in pharmaceutical development due to toxicity, stability and manufacturing costs. Because of these drawbacks, only a few AMPs have been tested in Phase III clinical trials and no AMPs have been approved by the US FDA yet. However, these obstacles could be overcome by well-known methods such as changing physicochemical characteristics and introducing nonnatural amino acids, acetylation or amidation, as well as modern techniques like molecular targeted AMPs, liposomal formulations and drug delivery systems. Thus, the current challenge in this field is to develop therapeutic AMPs at a reasonable cost as well as to overcome the limitations.
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: Sung Jean
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Tsogbadrakh
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mishig-Ochir
authors.forename: Bong-Jin
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000627:therapeutic use; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000191:economics / Q000627:therapeutic use* / Q000633:toxicity; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000187:drug effects; D002626:Chemistry, Pharmaceutical; D015195:Drug Design; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000191:economics / Q000639:trends
chemical_list: D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides
keywords: AMPs in drug development; antimicrobial peptides; limitations of AMPs; multidrug resistance; strategies for new therapeutic drug