Abstract
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a heterogeneous class of compounds found in a variety of organisms including humans and, so far, hundreds of these structures have been isolated and characterised. They can be described as natural microbicide, selectively cytotoxic to bacteria, whilst showing minimal cytotoxicity towards the mammalian cells of the host organism. They act by their relatively strong electrostatic attraction to the negatively charged bacterial cells and a relatively weak interaction to the eukaryote host cells. The ability of these peptides to accumulate at sites of infection combined with the minimal host's cytotoxicity motivated for this review to highlight the role and the usefulness of AMPs for PET with emphasis on their mechanism of action and the different interactions with the bacterial cell. These details are key information for their selective properties. We also describe the strategy, design, and utilization of these peptides as potential radiopharmaceuticals as their combination with nuclear medicine modalities such as SPECT or PET would allow noninvasive whole-body examination for detection of occult infection causing, for example, fever of unknown origin.
Highlights
Compared with other conventional technologies, tomographic imaging can evaluate disease processes deep within the body, noninvasively and relatively rapidly
They act by their relatively strong electrostatic attraction to the negatively charged bacterial cells and a relatively weak interaction to the eukaryote host cells. The ability of these peptides to accumulate at sites of infection combined with the minimal host’s cytotoxicity motivated for this review to highlight the role and the usefulness of Antimicrobial peptides (AMP) for positron emission tomography (PET) with emphasis on their mechanism of action and the different interactions with the bacterial cell
We describe the strategy, design, and utilization of these peptides as potential radiopharmaceuticals as their combination with nuclear medicine modalities such as SPECT or PET would allow noninvasive whole-body examination for detection of occult infection causing, for example, fever of unknown origin
Summary
Compared with other conventional technologies, tomographic imaging can evaluate disease processes deep within the body, noninvasively and relatively rapidly. Tracers that interact directly with the pathogenic microbes responsible for infection are, by nature, highly specific for infection and unlike labeled leukocytes should not accumulate in sterile inflammations These types of tracers include radiolabeled antibiotics and antimicrobial peptides. It is thought that the net cationic nature of the peptides results in a relatively strong electrostatic attraction to negatively charged bacterial cells and a relatively weak attraction to the eukaryote host cells, which are usually less negatively charged than prokaryotes, and is believed to form the basis of this cell-type discrimination [9] The ability of these peptides to accumulate at sites of infection combined with their almost negligible cytotoxicity or attraction to host cells makes these peptides attractive as targeting vectors for PET imaging of infection [10]
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