In their review ‘Arming the enemy: the evolution of resistance to self-proteins’, Bell & Gouyon (2003) present an interesting perspective. They suggest that the introduction of cationic antimicrobial peptide antibiotics into general (clinical) use ‘may provoke the evolution of resistance to our own defence proteins and thus compromise our natural defences against infection’. I feel it is very a...

In the last decades, considerable attention has been paid to the collection of antimicrobial resistance data, with the aim of monitoring non-wild-type isolates. This monitoring is performed based on minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) values, which are collected through dilution experiments. We present a semi-parametric mixture model to estimate the entire MIC density on the continuous scale...

Over the past decade, levels of bacterial resistance to antibiotics have risen dramatically and "superbugs" resistant to most or all available agents have appeared in the clinic. Thus there is a growing need to discover and introduce new drugs. One potential source of novel antibiotics is the cationic antimicrobial peptides, which have been isolated from most living entities as components of th...

This article summarizes the current literature describing how antimicrobial stewardship interventions impact antimicrobial resistance. Discussion includes why we need stewardship, how to collaborate with team members, and the evidence of stewardship's impact on resistance.

Development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens our ability to treat common and life threatening infections. Identifying the emergence of AMR requires strengthening of surveillance for AMR, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) where the burden of infection is highest and health systems are least able to respond. This work aimed, through a combination of desk-based inv...

The preclinical in vitro and in vivo benchmark figures of cationic antimicrobial peptides have to be revisited based on the newly discovered alternative modes of action.

A single animal can express several cationic antimicrobial peptides with different sequences and structures. We demonstrate that mammalian peptides from different structural classes frequently show synergy with each other and selectively show synergy with human lysozyme.

A series of (benzamidostyryl)benzimidazole derivatives were synthesized by hydrolyzing 2-phenyl-4-(substituted)benzylidene-5-oxazolones, the azlactone precursors in an acidic medium and treating the product with substituted o-phenylenediamine (OPDA) in situ. The structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by spectral and elemental analyses. All synthesized compounds were screened for...

Bacillus velezensis GF610 was isolated from soil in Illinois, USA, and found to produce amyloliquecidin GF610, a potent two-component antimicrobial peptide. We report here the GF610 strain draft genome sequence, which contains 4.29 Mb and an overall GC content of 45.91%.