Abstract
Antimicrobial peptides constitute one of the most promising alternatives to antibiotics since they could be used to treat bacterial infections, especially those caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens. Many antimicrobial peptides, with various activity spectra and mechanisms of actions, have been described. This review focuses on their use against ESKAPE bacteria, especially in biofilm treatments, their synergistic activity, and their application as prophylactic agents. Limitations and challenges restricting therapeutic applications are highlighted, and solutions for each challenge are evaluated to analyze whether antimicrobial peptides could replace antibiotics in the near future.
Highlights
Accepted: 6 September 2021There was collective enthusiasm about the advent of antibiotic therapy, and this optimism prevailed in the light of the constant discoveries of new classes of antibiotics, despite the very early description of therapeutic failures and resistance to treatments with these drugs [1]
antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) can down-regulate certain genes involved in quorum sensing, the latter being known to play a role in biofilm formation and/or in the organization and communication of bacteria within the biofilm [34]
Several advantages were observed for AMPs over classical antibiotics: (i) usual resistance mechanisms observed toward conventional antibiotics are bypassed by AMPs [36,37]; (ii) they are easier to synthesize since they consist usually of short amino acid sequences [38]; (iii) they show rapid killing [39]; (iv) they act on bacteria irrespective of their resistance phenotype, since they are not affected by the known resistance mechanisms [40,41,42], and (v) they do not affect microbiota, which are often disrupted by conventional antibiotics [43]
Summary
There was collective enthusiasm about the advent of antibiotic therapy, and this optimism prevailed in the light of the constant discoveries of new classes of antibiotics, despite the very early description of therapeutic failures and resistance to treatments with these drugs [1]. New compounds that are active against pathogens, especially those which cause nosocomial infections and tend to adopt multidrug resistance, are needed To curb this problem, several alternative therapies have been proposed, among which antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) were suggested to be very promising more than 20 years ago, as they have existed in nature for millions of years with almost no or limited resistance development [4]. Several alternative therapies have been proposed, among which antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) were suggested to be very promising more than 20 years ago, as they have existed in nature for millions of years with almost no or limited resistance development [4] This makes them very attractive compared to antibiotics that develop resistance relatively fast. It summarizes all available data for desired peptide properties, allowing further structural and functional studies [10]
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