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REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1582863
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Antimicrobial Strategies: Nucleic Acid and Peptide-Based Approaches View all 3 articles
Progress in the Classification, Optimization, Activity, and Application of Antimicrobial Peptides
Provisionally accepted- 1 Marine Biomedical Research Institute, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, China
- 2 Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, China
- 3 Department of Neurology, Huazhou People's Hospital, Maoming, Guangdong Province, China
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) come from various sources and exhibit unique antimicrobial properties. Their rapid action, effectiveness, and resistance to resistance development make them promising alternatives to combat antibiotic resistance. In addition to its excellent antibacterial properties, AMPs have superior immunomodulatory, antitumor, and antiviral activities.In recent years, the demand for AMPs has continued to increase in many fields, especially in the medical field, and the prospects are extensive. However, AMPs have the disadvantages of expensive development cost, higher hemolysis, short half-life, susceptibility to degradation by protein hydrolases, low bioavailability, toxic side effects, and other disadvantages, which seriously limit the wide application of AMPs. Therefore, fewer AMPs have been approved for marketing or are undergoing clinical trials. The review covers the period from 2001 to 2025 and provides a detailed discussion by searching databases such as Google Scholar and Web of Science. This paper reviews the progress of research on AMPs sources, structures, optimization strategies, biological activities, mechanisms of action, and applications. In general, the development approaches and the number of new AMPs have increased significantly. The improvement technologies for AMPs high hemolysis, poor stability, low bioavailability and high cost have increased significantly. The development cost of AMPs is still high, but many AMPs have been widely used in clinical, food, livestock, poultry, cosmetics and other fields. This article focuses on the commonly used optimization strategies and main activities of AMPs, aiming to effectively respond to challenges and provide a theoretical basis for expanding their application range.
Keywords: antimicrobial peptides, Classification, Performance optimization, Biological activity, application
Received: 25 Feb 2025; Accepted: 03 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Su, Yu, Lv, Chen, Luo and Zhang. 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:
Zuheng Su, Marine Biomedical Research Institute, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, China
Huajun Yu, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, China
Tingting Lv, Department of Neurology, Huazhou People's Hospital, Maoming, Guangdong Province, China
Qizhou Chen, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, China
Hui Luo, Marine Biomedical Research Institute, Guangdong Medical University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.