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The search for efficient antimicrobial therapies that can alleviate suffering caused by infections from resistant bacteria is more urgent than ever before. Infections caused by multi-resistant pathogens represent a significant and increasing burden to healthcare and society and researcher are investigating new classes of bioactive compounds to slow down this development. Antimicrobial peptides from the innate immune system represent one promising class that offers a potential solution to the antibiotic resistance problem due to their mode of action on the microbial membranes. However, challenges associated with pharmacokinetics, bioavailability and off-target toxicity are slowing down the advancement and use of innate defensive peptides. Improving the therapeutic properties of these peptides is a strategy for reducing the clinical limitations and synthetic mimics of antimicrobial peptides are emerging as a promising class of molecules for a variety of antimicrobial applications. These compounds can be made significantly shorter while maintaining, or even improving antimicrobial properties, and several downsized synthetic mimics are now in clinical development for a range of infectious diseases. A variety of strategies can be employed to prepare these small compounds and this review describes the different compounds developed to date by adhering to a minimum pharmacophore based on an amphiphilic balance between cationic charge and hydrophobicity. These compounds can be made as small as dipeptides, circumventing the need for large compounds with elaborate three-dimensional structures to generate simplified and potent antimicrobial mimics for a range of medical applications. This review highlight key and recent development in the field of small antimicrobial peptide mimics as a promising class of antimicrobials, illustrating just how small you can go.

A range of natural products from marine invertebrates, bacteria and fungi have been assessed as leads for nature-inspired antifouling (AF) biocides, but little attention has been paid to microalgal-derived compounds. This study assessed the AF activity of the spirocyclic imine portimine (1), which is produced by the benthic mat-forming dinoflagellate Vulcanodinium rugosum. Portimine displayed potent AF activity in a panel of four macrofouling bioassays (EC50 0.06–62.5 ng ml−1), and this activity was distinct from that of the related compounds gymnodimine-A (2), 13-desmethyl spirolide C (3), and pinnatoxin-F (4). The proposed mechanism of action for portimine is induction of apoptosis, based on the observation that portimine inhibited macrofouling organisms at developmental stages known to involve apoptotic processes. Semisynthetic modification of select portions of the portimine molecule was subsequently undertaken. Observed changes in bioactivity of the resulting semisynthetic analogues of portimine were consistent with portimine’s unprecedented 5-membered imine ring structure playing a central role in its AF activity.

With a “magnifying glass”, a highly sophisticated atomic force microscope (AFM) scientists have recently developed a technique that allows single molecule visualization with atomic resolution.

The widespread overuse and misuse of antibiotics throughout the world has led to bacterial resistance to many commercially available antibiotics. Hence, the development of novel classes of antibiotics is required to address this pressing public health problem. Cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAPs) are considered to be a promising new class of drugs against multi-resistant bacteria [1]. While their minimum antimicrobial motif has been defined [2], the limited success of CAPs so far is partially due to unresolved chemical and metabolic stability issues. In order to obtain comprehensive information regarding the metabolic fate, these peptides and derivatives were tested in vitro by incubation in buffer/denatured plasma, plasma and organ homogenates. A general screening procedure was used [3], where aliquots are withdrawn at pre-determined time points and analyzed by HPLC-UV/PDA-ESI/MS for determination of CAP degradation kinetics and identification of the degradation metabolites. Based on this information, QSPR (Quantitative Structure-Property Relationships) models can be built to predict the stability as a function of the peptide sequence (i.e. which peptide bonds are most unstable). Such a model can then be used to suggest directions for new CAPs with improved pharmaceutical drugability characteristics. References: [1] Svenson J, Stensen W, Brandsdal BO, Haug BE, Monrad J, Svendsen JS. Antimicrobial peptides with stability toward tryptic degradation. Biochemistry 47 (2008) 3777-3788. [2] Strom MB, Haug BE, Skar ML, Stensen W, Stiberg T, Svendsen JS. The pharmacophore of short cationic antibacterial peptides. J Med Chem 46 (2003) 1567-1570. [3] Vergote V, Van Dorpe S, Peremans K, Burvenich C, De Spiegeleer B. In vitro metabolic stability of obestatin: Kinetics and identification of cleavage products. Peptides 29 (2008) 1740-1748.

Background Many biologically active compounds bind to plasma transport proteins, and this binding can be either advantageous or disadvantageous from a drug design perspective. Human serum albumin (HSA) is one of the most important transport proteins in the cardiovascular system due to its great binding capacity and high physiological concentration. HSA has a preference for accommodating neutral lipophilic and acidic drug-like ligands, but is also surprisingly able to bind positively charged peptides. Understanding of how short cationic antimicrobial peptides interact with human serum albumin is of importance for developing such compounds into the clinics. Results The binding of a selection of short synthetic cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAPs) to human albumin with binding affinities in the μM range is described. Competitive isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and NMR WaterLOGSY experiments mapped the binding site of the CAPs to the well-known drug site II within subdomain IIIA of HSA. Thermodynamic and structural analysis revealed that the binding is exclusively driven by interactions with the hydrophobic moieties of the peptides, and is independent of the cationic residues that are vital for antimicrobial activity. Both of the hydrophobic moieties comprising the peptides were detected to interact with drug site II by NMR saturation transfer difference (STD) group epitope mapping (GEM) and INPHARMA experiments. Molecular models of the complexes between the peptides and albumin were constructed using docking experiments, and support the binding hypothesis and confirm the overall binding affinities of the CAPs. Conclusions The biophysical and structural characterizations of albumin-peptide complexes reported here provide detailed insight into how albumin can bind short cationic peptides. The hydrophobic elements of the peptides studied here are responsible for the main interaction with HSA. We suggest that albumin binding should be taken into careful consideration in antimicrobial peptide studies, as the systemic distribution can be significantly affected by HSA interactions.