New peptides from spiders are effective against superbugs

With the rise of antibiotic resistance and concerns about superbugs, scientists are looking for new treatments One area of focus is antimicrobial peptides (AMPS), which are likely to become substitutes for current prescription antibiotics, many of which are increasingly useless for some bacteria Antibacterial peptide is a kind of basic peptide with antibacterial activity, which is induced by insects Its molecular weight is about 2000-7000, and it consists of 20-60 amino acid residues Most of these peptides have the characteristics of strong basicity, thermal stability and broad-spectrum antibacterial The first antibacterial peptide discovered in the world was cecropins, which was produced by the silkworm chrysalis of xigubi induced by the injection of Bacillus vulgaris and Escherichia coli in 1980 by G Boman and other Swedish scientists Now, a team in ACS chemical biology reports that they have improved the antibacterial and anticancer properties of AMP from spiders According to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, 2 million people are infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria in the United States every year Because there are no known antibiotics that can resist these bacteria, patients can only hope that natural defense will eventually overcome infection But some patients will have serious symptoms, put them in the hospital, and may die in extreme cases Researchers are trying to find alternatives to traditional antibiotics, one possibility being a group of peptides called amp These peptides have been found in all plants and animals as an immune response and have been proved to be effective antibiotics in the laboratory Gomesin is an amp from acanthoscurria gomesiana, a Brazilian spider, which can be used as an antibiotic, but also has anticancer activity When the composite gosesin is circular rather than linear, these features are enhanced S ó NIA troeira Henriques and colleagues hope to further improve the peptide's properties The team synthesized several altered CGRP peptides and found that some of them were more than 10 times better than killing most bacteria In other experiments, the new amp specifically killed melanoma and leukemia cells, but not breast, gastric, cervical or epithelial cancer cells The researchers determined that the modified peptide killed bacteria and cancer cells in a similar way - by destroying cell membranes The group also pointed out that the modified amp is non-toxic to healthy blood cells.