Bacteria have acquired extensive resistance mechanisms to protect themselves against antibiotic action. Today the bacterial membrane has become one of the "final frontiers" in the search for new compounds acting on novel targets to address the threat of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and XDR bacterial pathogens. β-Hairpin antimicrobial peptides are amphipathic, membrane-binding antibiotics that exh...

A COMPUTATIONAL AND STATISTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR SCREENING NOVEL ANTIMICROBIAL PEPTIDES Daniel Paul Veltri, PhD George Mason University, 2015 Dissertation Director: Dr. Amarda Shehu Bacterial resistance to antibiotics continues to be a serious concern worldwide. This has motivated a strong research focus on naturally-occurring antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as templates for new drug development. To...

Inspired by high promise using naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) to treat infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, cationic amphiphiles (CAms) were strategically designed as synthetic mimics to overcome associated limitations, including high manufacture cost and low metabolic stability. CAms with facially amphiphilic conformation were expected to demonstrate membra...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major worldwide health problem in part due to the lack of development of new treatments and the emergence of new strains such as multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant strains that are threatening and impairing the control of this disease. In this study, the efficacy of natural and synthetic cationic antimicrobial (host defence) peptides that have been s...

results ll-37 and its truncated analogs were effective in inhibiting the growth of pdrab and had a rapid killing ability. after exposure to the peptides, the development of the pdrab biofilm was inhibited. strong inhibitory and dispersion effects of ff/cap18 on the biofilm were confirmed by fluorescence microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy. conclusions this results show th...

Antimicrobial peptides are among the repertoire of host innate immune defenses. In mucosal immunity, the health-disease balance can be greatly modulated by the interplay between host immune factors and colonized microflora. Microbial ecology within dental plaque is constantly shaped by environmental factors present within the oral cavity. Several antimicrobial peptides are detected in saliva an...

Salt sensitivity of antimicrobial peptides poses a major obstacle in their development as novel antibiotics. Here we report the use of helix-capping motifs to confer salt resistance upon helical antimicrobial peptides. The helical content of the template peptide [RLLR](5) was almost completely destroyed at salt concentrations over 200 mm NaCl, leading to a 8-32-fold decrease in antimicrobial ac...

Our study confronts the use of antimicrobial agents in ambulatory care with the resistance trends of 2 major pathogens, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Escherichia coli, in 21 European countries in 2000-2005 and explores whether the notion that antimicrobial drug use determines resistance can be supported by surveillance data at national aggregation levels. The data obtained from the European Surv...

We demonstrate here a strategy for enhanced antibacterial activity against microbial strains by the assembly of antimicrobial peptides with a temperature-responsive polymeric carrier. The assembly complex was less toxic to human cells and more stable to enzymatic cleavage. This work may provide a promising drug delivery system for antimicrobial peptides.