Department of Sciences, University of Basilicata, Via dell'Ateneo Lucano 10, 85100, Potenza, Italy.
Spinoff XFlies S.R.L, University of Basilicata, Via dell'Ateneo Lucano 10, 85100, Potenza, Italy.
Cell Mol Life Sci. 2021 May;78(9):4259-4282. doi: 10.1007/s00018-021-03784-z. Epub 2021 Feb 17.
Misuse and overuse of antibiotics have contributed in the last decades to a phenomenon known as antibiotic resistance which is currently considered one of the principal threats to global public health by the World Health Organization. The aim to find alternative drugs has been demonstrated as a real challenge. Thanks to their biodiversity, insects represent the largest class of organisms in the animal kingdom. The humoral immune response includes the production of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) that are released into the insect hemolymph after microbial infection. In this review, we have focused on insect immune responses, particularly on AMP characteristics, their mechanism of action and applications, especially in the biomedical field. Furthermore, we discuss the Toll, Imd, and JAK-STAT pathways that activate genes encoding for the expression of AMPs. Moreover, we focused on strategies to improve insect peptides stability against proteolytic susceptibility such as D-amino acid substitutions, N-terminus modification, cyclization and dimerization.
在过去的几十年里，抗生素的滥用和过度使用导致了一种被称为抗生素耐药性的现象，世界卫生组织目前认为这是对全球公共卫生的主要威胁之一。寻找替代药物的目标已被证明是一个真正的挑战。由于其生物多样性，昆虫是动物界最大的生物类群。体液免疫反应包括产生抗菌肽 (AMPs)，这些肽在微生物感染后被释放到昆虫血液中。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了昆虫的免疫反应，特别是 AMP 的特性、作用机制及其应用，特别是在生物医学领域。此外，我们还讨论了激活 AMP 基因表达的 Toll、Imd 和 JAK-STAT 途径。此外，我们还专注于提高昆虫肽对蛋白水解敏感性的稳定性的策略，例如 D-氨基酸取代、N 末端修饰、环化和二聚化。
