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REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Translational Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1548603
This article is part of the Research Topic Anti-Cancer Potential of Antimicrobial Peptides View all articles
CATIONIC ANTIMICROBIAL PEPTIDES: POTENTIAL TEMPLATES FOR ANTICANCER AGENTS
Provisionally accepted- Fundación Salud de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
Cancer is a major global health concern and one of the leading causes of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is an urgent need for novel therapeutic agents to treat this disease. Some antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have demonstrated activity against both microbial pathogens and cancer cells. Among these, cationic AMPs (CAMPs) have garnered significant attention because of their ability to selectively interact with the negatively charged surfaces of cancer cell membranes. CAMPs present several advantages, such as high specificity for targeting cancer cells, minimal toxicity to normal cells, reduced probability of inducing resistance, stability under physiological conditions, ease of chemical modification, and low production costs. This review focuses on CAMPs with anticancer properties, such as KLA, bovine lactoferricin derivatives, and LTX-315, and briefly explores common bioinformatics tools for Anticancer Peptides (ACPs) selection pipeline from AMPs.
Keywords: Cationic Antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs), Anticancer peptides (ACPs), synthetic peptides, Peptide therapeutics, clinical trials
Received: 19 Dec 2024; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Varela-Quitián, Bernal-Estévez and Mendez-Rivera. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yahson Fernando Varela-Quitián, Fundación Salud de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
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