About this Research Topic

Background

Emerging viral infections remain a constant global health threat affecting all aspects of life. The major challenge associated with emerging viruses is lack of the specific and effective therapeutics for the treatment of patients and to control the virus spread. One of the approaches to overcome this urgent need is to develop peptide-based therapeutics. These peptide-based treatments could have high specificity and limited side effects. Peptides-based vaccines offer advantages in inducing specific T and B cell immune responses to control viral infections. Peptide-based drugs are a rapidly developing area of novel therapeutics discovery which aims to inhibit viral growth. Advances in our understanding of the viral growth and mechanisms of the disease pathogenesis have led to the discovery of multiple peptides, which are in clinical development and preclinical studies.

Our advances in selecting, manufacturing, and testing peptide-based vaccine and drugs are based on recent progress in developing novel techniques and approaches. These approaches include computer-based identification of peptides, which are conserved and contain immunodominant epitopes as potential vaccine candidates. Also, immunoinformatic analyses could help select peptides having no adverse effects. Bioinformatics tools such as molecular docking and simulation could aid the identification of peptides with antiviral activity. These bioinformatics-based preliminary work enables the avoidance of the use of animals and facilitates the speed of selection of peptides with desired features. Also, our advances in in vivo approaches allow the selection of appropriate models for testing identified peptides with potential therapeutic activity. Additionally, data from clinical trials using novel and previously identified peptides provides a tool for the healthcare providers to serve better our communities.

In this Research Topic, we welcome the submission of Original Research manuscripts, Case Reports, Clinical Trials, Review, and Mini Review articles, covering, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:

• In silico identification of peptides with potential therapeutic activity

• Peptide-based vaccines and antiviral drugs

• Molecular mechanisms of peptide anti-viral activity

• Therapeutic potency of peptides in in vitro and in vivo experimental systems

• Clinical trials on the therapeutic efficacy of peptides

• Reviews on recent advances in discovery, analysis, manufacturing, and analysis of the therapeutic potency of peptide-based therapeutics

Topic Editor Shisong Jiang received financial support from Oxford Vacmedix UK Ltd. The other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject.

Keywords: Peptides, peptide-based therapeutics, emerging viral infection, pandemic, immune response, Vaccines

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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