Antimicrobial Peptides: Design, Synthesis and Pharmaceutical Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Natural functional peptides have been identified in a wide range of organisms, exhibiting a variety of functions including antibiotic/antifungal/antiviral, anticancer, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurochemical, renal, respiratory, and immune/inflammatory functions. As they can be easily modified in their amino acid sequences, and synthesized chemically using relatively straightforward methods, therapeutic peptides have drawn great attention as candidates for drug developments. Currently, clinical practice is facing problems caused by the rapid development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Most of the traditional antibiotics used in routine treatments for bacterial infections are losing their efficacies. As a result, there is an urgent need to continually develop novel effective antibiotics to be used in clinical practice. For this purpose, a group of peptide-based pharmaceuticals, antimicrobial peptides, have emerged as the focus of various studies. Intensive and extensive efforts have been made in this field by research scientists around the world, and a large number of antimicrobial peptides have been yielded, of which some have been successfully marketed and many are under development in different stages. Many of the antimicrobial peptides have been demonstrated to exhibit broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities against different types of pathogens. A number of antimicrobial peptides have also been found to alter host immuno and inflammatory responses to pathogen infections.  As antimicrobial peptides adopt different bactericidal mechanisms from those of traditional antibiotics, they are less prone to resistance development in bacteria. However, there are also challenges associated with the use of antimicrobial peptides, such as stability issues, mammalian cytotoxicity and hemolysis, cost of production, and potential immunogenicity, etc. Therefore, research is required on addressing these issues to harness the full therapeutic potential of antimicrobial peptides.

This Special Issue entitled “Antimicrobial Peptides: Design, Synthesis and Pharmaceutical Applications” aims to publish original research and review articles related to all aspects of antimicrobial peptides, including peptide design, modifications, identifications, synthesis, stability, interactions with bacterial components, and clinical applications, etc. Papers on the effects of peptides on inflammatory responses in infected hosts, and the extended applications or repurposing of antimicrobial peptides to treat cancers and other diseases are also within the scope of this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Je-Wen Liou
Guest Editor

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• natural antimicrobial peptides
• antimicrobial peptide design and modifications
• antimicrobial peptide structures
• antimicrobial peptide stability
• mechanism/mode of action of antimicrobial peptides
• antimicrobial peptide applications
• modulation of infection-related immune and inflammation by peptides
• extended applications of antimicrobial peptides for treatments of cancers and other diseases
• clinical trials of pharmaceutical peptides