Saha Subhasree, Barik Devashish, Biswas Debabrata
Institute of Life Sciences, NALCO Square, Bhubaneswar 751023, Odisha, India.
Antibiotics (Basel). 2024 May 13;13(5):439. doi: 10.3390/antibiotics13050439.
Skin is the primary and largest protective organ of the human body. It produces a number of highly evolved arsenal of factors to counter the continuous assault of foreign materials and pathogens from the environment. One such potent factor is the repertoire of Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs) that not only directly destroys invading pathogens, but also optimally modulate the immune functions of the body to counter the establishment and spread of infections. The canonical direct antimicrobial functions of these AMPs have been in focus for a long time to design principles for enhanced therapeutics, especially against the multi-drug resistant pathogens. However, in recent times the immunomodulatory functions performed by these peptides at sub-microbicidal concentrations have been a point of major focus in the field of host-directed therapeutics. Such strategies have the added benefit of not having the pathogens develop resistance against the immunomodulatory pathways, since the pathogens exploit these signaling pathways to obtain and survive within the host. Thus, this review summarizes the potent immunomodulatory effect of these AMPs on, specifically, the different host immune cells with the view of providing a platform of information that might help in designing studies to exploit and formulate effective host-directed adjunct therapeutic strategies that would synergies with drug regimens to counter the current diversity of drug-resistant skin opportunistic pathogens.
皮肤是人体主要且最大的保护器官。它产生了许多高度进化的防御因子，以应对来自环境的外来物质和病原体的持续侵袭。其中一种强大的因子是抗菌肽（AMPs），它不仅能直接摧毁入侵的病原体，还能最佳地调节身体的免疫功能，以对抗感染的建立和传播。长期以来，这些抗菌肽的典型直接抗菌功能一直是设计增强治疗方法（尤其是针对多重耐药病原体）的重点。然而，近年来，这些肽在亚杀菌浓度下发挥的免疫调节功能已成为宿主导向治疗领域的主要关注焦点。此类策略还有一个额外的好处，即病原体不会对免疫调节途径产生抗性，因为病原体利用这些信号通路在宿主体内获取营养并生存。因此，本综述总结了这些抗菌肽对不同宿主免疫细胞的强大免疫调节作用，旨在提供一个信息平台，这可能有助于设计研究，以开发和制定有效的宿主导向辅助治疗策略，与药物疗法协同作用，应对当前耐药性皮肤机会性病原体的多样性。
