Title:Recent Advances in Peptide Nucleic Acids as Antibacterial Agents
Volume: 28
Issue: 6
Author(s): Wei Chen, Bo Dong, Wenen Liu and Zhengchun Liu*
Affiliation:
- Hunan Key Laboratory for Super Microstructure and Ultrafast Process, School of Physics and Electronics Central South University, Changsha 410083,China
Keywords:
Peptide nucleic acid (PNA), antisense, antibacterial, messenger RNA (mRNA), ribosomal RNA
(rRNA), antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Abstract: The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the slow progress in searching for new
antimicrobial agents makes it hard to treat bacterial infections and cause problems for the healthcare
system worldwide, including high costs, prolonged hospitalizations, and increased mortality. Therefore,
the discovery of effective antibacterial agents is of great importance. One attractive alternative
is antisense peptide nucleic acid (PNA), which inhibits or eliminates gene expression by binding to
the complementary messenger RNA (mRNA) sequence of essential genes or the accessible and functionally
important regions of the ribosomal RNA (rRNA). Following 30 years of development, PNAs
have played an extremely important role in the treatment of Gram-positive, Gram-negative, and acidfast
bacteria due to their desirable stability of hybrid complex with target RNA, the strong affinity for
target mRNA/rRNA, and the stability against nucleases. PNA-based antisense antibiotics can
strongly inhibit the growth of pathogenic and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a sequence-specific and
dose-dependent manner at micromolar concentrations. However, several fundamental challenges,
such as intracellular delivery, solubility, physiological stability, and clearance still need to be addressed
before PNAs become broadly applicable in clinical settings. In this review, we summarize
the recent advances in PNAs as antibacterial agents and the challenges that need to be overcome in
the future.