Synergistic therapeutic actions of antimicrobial peptides to treat multidrug-resistant bacterial infection

Growing antibiotic resistance has been reported as a great health problem throughout the world. The threat of multidrug resistance is significantly exacerbated in biofilm-associated infection as most of the antimicrobials are rarely effective against biofilm and its virulence factors. Consequently, there is a strong demand for developing novel approaches and new materials to treat biofilm-associated bacterial infection. Engineering technology introduces nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery to reduce treatment failure and increase the synergistic effects of the drugs. Cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs) are usually attracted to negatively charged bacterial phospholipid membrane and kill the microbial pathogens by disintegrating their cell membrane with the subsequent collapse of infective pathogenesis. Previous studies have already provided evidence of the success of AMPs to treat the biofilm-associated multidrug-resistant bacterial infection. Although, there are some challenges to use AMPs in clinical practice such as proteolytic degradation, cytotoxicity, instability, low membrane permeability which diminishes the effects of AMPs as a wide spectral antibacterial agent. To enhance the highest therapeutic capacity of AMPs, research should need to be performed on designing a combination strategy to triumph over the difficulties of AMPs in the clinical application. The purpose of this review is to investigate the synergistic relationship of AMPs with a different type of antimicrobial agent including a nanocarrier drug delivery system to accomplish the clinical practice against drug-resistant bacterial infection. Copyright (C) 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.