As bacteria continue to resist our efforts to eradicate them, the development of new antibiotics with alternative modes of action are required to augment existing treatments. Cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAPs) show potential, but are often too cytotoxic to be developed as new antibiotics. One way to get around the cytotoxic mechanisms is to attach agents to carriers, such as gold nanoparticles which are non-toxic to cells and biocompatible.
In this HOT paper Tushar Kanti Chakraborty and colleagues from the Central Drug Research Institute, India, have synthesised some novel sugar amino acid-containing cyclic cationic peptides and attach them to gold nanoparticles to study their therapeutic effects. The preliminary studies found that the sugar amino acid-containing CAPs retained their antimicrobial activity on conjugation with the nanoparticles, but with significantly reduced cytotoxic effects.
Download the article to discover more about the study and the potential mechanism for these CAPs – it’s free to access for four weeks:
Towards the synthesis of sugar amino acid containing antimicrobial noncytotoxic CAP conjugates with gold nanoparticles and a mechanistic study of cell disruption
Sudip Pal, Kalyan Mitra, Sarfuddin Azmi, Jimut Kanti Ghosh and Tushar Kanti Chakraborty
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1OB05338H
