Inorganic gold and polymeric poly(lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles as novel strategies to ameliorate the biological properties of antimicrobial peptides
Cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are an interesting class of gene-encoded molecules endowed with a broad-spectrum of anti-infective activity and immunomodulatory properties. They represent promising candidates for the development of new antibiotics, mainly due to their membrane-perturbing mechanism of action that very rarely induces microbial resistance. However, bringing AMPs into clinical field is hampered by some intrinsic limitations, encompassing low peptide bioavailability at the target site and high peptide susceptibility to proteolytic degradation.