Antiviral peptides as promising therapeutic drugs

Abstract

While scientific advances have led to large-scale production and widespread distribution of vaccines and antiviral drugs, viruses still remain a major cause of human diseases today. The ever-increasing reports of viral resistance and the emergence and re-emergence of viral epidemics pressure the health and scientific community to constantly find novel molecules with antiviral potential. This search involves numerous different approaches, and the use of antimicrobial peptides has presented itself as an interesting alternative. Even though the number of antimicrobial peptides with antiviral activity is still low, they already show immense potential to become pharmaceutically available antiviral drugs. Such peptides can originate from natural sources, such as those isolated from mammals and from animal venoms, or from artificial sources, when bioinformatics tools are used. This review aims to shed some light on antimicrobial peptides with antiviral activities against human viruses and update the data about the already well-known peptides that are still undergoing studies, emphasizing the most promising ones that may become medicines for clinical use.

Keywords: Drugs; Human diseases; Human viruses; Natural peptides; Rational design.

Fig. 1

Antiviral peptide inhibition sites on viral replication cycle. The antiviral peptides with a described mechanism of action were placed in their inhibition sites as follows: 1, virion inhibition; 2, adsorption; 3, viral penetration; 4, endosomal escape; 5, viral uncoating; 6, viral genome replication and 7, release of mature virions

Fig. 2

Structure of some AVPs already described. Magainin 1 and 2, melittin, lactarcin, clavanin, dermaseptin S4, lactoferricin, HNP1 and 4, HBD 2 and 3, protegrin, and temporin B

Fig. 3

Antimicrobial peptides aligned per family