Title:Antimicrobial Peptides Under Clinical Trials
Volume: 17
Issue: 5
Author(s): Katarzyna E. Greber and Małgorzata Dawgul
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Antimicrobial peptides, Antibiotics, Antifungal, Clinical trials, Drug development, Peptide therapeutics, Peptide
drugs.
Abstract: Today microbial drug resistance has become a serious problem not only within inpatient setting
but also within outpatient setting. Repeated intake and unnecessary usage of antibiotics as well as
the transfer of resistance genes are the most important factors that make the microorganisms resistant
to conventional antibiotics. A large number of antimicrobials successfully used for prophylaxis and
therapeutic purposes have now become ineffective [1, 2]. Therefore, new molecules are being studied
to be used in the treatment of various diseases. Some of these molecules are structural compounds
based on a combination of peptides, for example, naturally occurring endogenous peptide antibiotics
and their synthetic analogues or molecules designed de novo using QSAR (quantitative structureproperty
relationships)-based methods [3]. Trying to exploit numerous advantages of antimicrobial
peptides such as high potency and selectivity, broad range of targets, potentially low toxicity and low
accumulation in tissues, pharmaceutical industry aims to develop them as commercially available
drugs and appropriate clinical trials are being conducted [4]. In this paper we define clinical trials steps
and describe current status of several antimicrobial peptides under clinical development as well as
briefly depict peptide drug formulation.
