Antifungal peptides: novel therapeutic compounds against emerging pathogens.

The need for safe and effective antifungal agents increases in parallel with the expanding number of immunocompromised patients at risk for invasive fungal infections. The emergence of fungal pathogens resistant to current therapies further compounds the dearth of antifungal agents. Currently available antifungal compounds act on targets also found in mammalian cells (34), which may result in toxicity or an adverse drug interaction. It is therefore imperative to find antifungal compounds that are not toxic to mammalian cells. The past decade has witnessed a dramatic growth in knowledge of natural peptides. Peptides such as the cecropins were shown to be antimicrobial but not lethal for mammalian cells (21, 141, 162, 182). Most data on antimicrobial peptides concern bacteria. This minireview presents a review of the current literature on antifungal peptides, including their in vitro and in vivo activities, mechanisms of action, and structure-function relationships, when known.