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.