Issue 10, 2023

Resistance is futile: targeting multidrug-resistant bacteria with de novo Cys-rich cyclic polypeptides

Abstract

The search for novel antimicrobial agents to combat microbial pathogens is intensifying in response to rapid drug resistance development to current antibiotic therapeutics. The use of disulfide-rich head-to-tail cyclized polypeptides as molecular frameworks for designing a new type of peptide antibiotics is gaining increasing attention among the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry. The use of macrocyclic peptides, further constrained by the presence of several disulfide bonds, makes these peptide frameworks remarkably more stable to thermal, biological, and chemical degradation showing better activities when compared to their linear analogs. Many of these novel peptide scaffolds have been shown to have a high tolerance to sequence variability in those residues not involved in disulfide bonds, able to cross biological membranes, and efficiently target complex biomolecular interactions. Hence, these unique properties make the use of these scaffolds ideal for many biotechnological applications, including the design of novel peptide antibiotics. This article provides an overview of the new developments in the use of several disulfide-rich cyclic polypeptides, including cyclotides, θ-defensins, and sunflower trypsin inhibitor peptides, among others, in the development of novel antimicrobial peptides against multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Graphical abstract: Resistance is futile: targeting multidrug-resistant bacteria with de novo Cys-rich cyclic polypeptides

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
08 Feb 2023
Accepted
27 Jul 2023
First published
21 Aug 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Chem. Biol., 2023,4, 722-735

Resistance is futile: targeting multidrug-resistant bacteria with de novo Cys-rich cyclic polypeptides

A. Mourenza, R. Ganesan and J. A. Camarero, RSC Chem. Biol., 2023, 4, 722 DOI: 10.1039/D3CB00015J

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