Acetylcholinesterase-inhibitory peptide has gained much importance since it can inhibit acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and increase the availability of acetylcholine in cholinergic synapses, enhancing cholinergic transmission in pharmacological treatmen...
Natural cyclic peptides, a diverse class of bioactive compounds, have been isolated from various natural sources and are renowned for their extensive structural variability and broad spectrum of medicinal properties. Over 40 cyclic peptides or their...
Pain affects one-third of the global population and is a significant public health issue. The use of opioid drugs, which are the strongest painkillers, is associated with several side effects, such as tolerance, addiction, overdose, and even death. A...
The addictive nature of nicotine is likely the most significant reason for the continued prevalence of tobacco smoking despite the widespread reports of its negative health effects. Nicotine vaccines are an alternative to the currently available smok...
Antioxidant peptides are a class of biologically active peptides with low molecular weights and stable antioxidant properties that are isolated from proteins. In this review, the progress in research on the activity evaluation, action mechanism, and...
Traditional natural products in China have a long history and a vast pharmacological repertoire that has garnered significant attention due to their safety and efficacy in disease prevention and treatment. Among the bioactive components of traditiona...
Cancer is one of the major diseases that seriously threaten human life. Traditional anticancer therapies have achieved remarkable efficacy but have also some unavoidable side effects. Therefore, more and more research focuses on highly effective and...
Tortoiseshell and antler, the main components of Guilu Erxian Jiao, are natural products that can be used as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to alleviate osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. However, research on the active ingredients in tortoiseshell...
Natural peptides derived from plants have been an important source of medical substances for several decades. Due to their mechanism of action, chemical potential, and favourable side effect profile, these peptides represent a safer alternative to sy...
The stratum corneum (SC) is the outermost layer of the epidermis and plays an important role in maintaining skin moisture and protecting the skin from the external environment. Ceramide and natural moisturizing factor (NMF) are the major SC component...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are promising tools for combating microbial resistance. However, their therapeutic potential is hindered by two intrinsic drawbacks—low target affinity and poor in vivo stability. Macrocyclization, a process that i...
Peptides continue to gain significance in the pharmaceutical arena. Since the unveiling of insulin in 1921, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorised around 100 peptides for various applications. Peptides, although initially derived from...
Kelp (Laminaria japonica) is renowned for its rich content of flavor-enhancing amino acids and nucleotides; however, approximately 40% of kelp, including the thin edges and root areas, is discarded during its processing due to its inferior taste. To...
Elastases are a broad group of enzymes involved in the lysis of elastin, the main component of elastic fibres. They are produced and released in the human body, mainly by neutrophils and the pancreas. The imbalance between elastase activity and its e...
Background: Antimicrobial peptides are generally considered promising drug candidates for combating resistant bacterial infections. However, the selectivity of their action may vary significantly. Natural gomesin, isolated from haemocytes of the tara...
Peptides are important biomolecules which facilitate the understanding of complex biological processes, which in turn could be serendipitous biological targets for future drugs. They are classified as a unique therapeutic niche and will play an impor...
Bioactive peptides, specific protein fragments with positive health effects, are gaining traction in drug development for advantages like enhanced penetration, low toxicity, and rapid clearance. This comprehensive review navigates the intricate lands...
Human neurohormone vasopressin (AVP) is synthesized in overlapping regions in the hypothalamus. It is mainly known for its vasoconstricting abilities, and it is responsible for the regulation of plasma osmolality by maintaining fluid homeostasis. Ove...
Numerous epithelial cells and sometimes leukocytes release AMPs as their first line of defense. AMPs encompass cationic histatins, defensins, and cathelicidin to encounter oral pathogens with minimal resistance. However, their concentrations are sign...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are widespread in multicellular organisms. These structurally diverse molecules are produced as the first line of defense against pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. Also known as host defense pept...
Background/Objectives: Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), evolutionarily conserved components of innate immunity characterized by their broad-spectrum efficacy and minimal resistance development, are increasingly recognized as promising therapeutic candi...
Nature provides a variety of peptides that are expressed in most living species. Evolutionary pressure and natural selection have created and optimized these peptides to bind to receptors with high affinity. Hence, natural resources provide an abunda...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) present a promising scaffold for the development of potent antimicrobial agents. Substitution of tryptophan by non-natural amino acid Azulenyl-Alanine (AzAla) would allow studying the mechanism of action of AMPs by using...
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are constituents of the innate immune system in every kind of living organism. They can act by disrupting the microbial membrane or without affecting membrane stability. Interest in these small peptides stems from the fe...
Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) is a biomarker on the surface of cells with a role in promoting self-tolerance by suppressing the inflammatory activity of T cells. In this work, one peptide of PD-1 was used as the template for molecular imprin...
Peptides are distinctive biomacromolecules that demonstrate potential cytotoxicity and diversified bioactivities against a variety of microorganisms including bacteria, mycobacteria, and fungi via their unique mechanisms of action. Among broad-rangin...
Invasive fungal infections are associated with high mortality rates, despite appropriate antifungal therapy. Limited therapeutic options, resistance development and the high mortality of invasive fungal infections brought about more concern triggerin...
Candida species are considered as common flora of the healthy human mycobiome and occur on skin, mucosal surfaces of gastrointestinal and genitourinary tracks. Pathogenic Candida spp., reported to cause skin, vaginal and oral infections. Extensive us...
Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and death worldwide, making it a serious global health concern. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgical treatment are the most used conventional therapeutic approaches, although they show several side...
Peptidic natural products (PNPs) represent a medically important class of secondary metabolites that includes antibiotics, anti-inflammatory and antitumor agents. Advances in tandem mass spectra (MS/MS) acquisition and in silico database search metho...
The type 2 vasopressin receptor (V2R) is expressed in the kidneys, and it is the keystone of water homeostasis. Under the control of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, the V2R ensures vital functions, and any disturbance has dramatic consequences....
Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are anti-hypertensive drugs associated with several side effects. Natural compounds, namely bioactive peptides from brewing by-products—brewer’s spent grain (BSG) and yeast (BSY)—are pr...
Anticancer peptides (ACPs) are bioactive compounds known for their selective cytotoxicity against tumor cells via various mechanisms. Recent studies have demonstrated that in silico machine learning methods are effective in predicting peptides with a...
Amino acids and peptides are readily available biomolecules and can function as chiral ligands for transition metal catalysis. An example is the copper complex catalyzed 1,4-addition of dialkylzinc to acyclic enones, which employs peptide ligands. Th...
Over the last decades, many naturally occurring peptides have attracted the attention of medicinal chemists due to their promising applicability as pharmaceuticals or as models for drugs used in therapeutics. Marine peptides are chiral molecules comp...
Several milk/whey derived peptides possess high in vitro angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory activity. However, in some cases, poor correlation between the in vitro ACE inhibitory activity and the in vivo antihypertensive activity has be...
The 3D structure and surface characteristics of proteins and peptides are crucial for interactions with receptors or ligands and can be modified to some extent to modulate their biological roles and pharmacological activities. The introduction of hal...
The aim of this study was to re-validate the changes in natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity and cytokines related to T cells after Sil-Q1 (SQ; silk peptide) supplementation in a larger pool of Korean adults with minimized daily dose of SQ and contr...
Anticancer peptides are short and structurally heterogeneous aminoacidic chains, which display selective cytotoxicity mostly against tumor cells, but not healthy cells, based on their different cell surface properties. Their anti-tumoral activity is...
Cultured pearls are the product of grafting and rearing of Pinctada margaritifera pearl oysters in their natural environment. Nucleus rejections and oyster mortality appear to result from bacterial infections or from an inappropriate grafting practic...
In this review, we discuss emerging technologies for drug discovery, which yields novel molecular scaffolds based on natural product-inspired non-traditional peptides expressed using the translation machinery. Unlike natural products, these technolog...
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for effective and affordable antiviral drugs. Anthropogenic activities have increased interactions among humans, animals, and wildlife, contributing to the emergence of new and re-emerging viral diseases...
The spread of multidrug-resistant human pathogens has drawn attention towards antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which are major players in the innate immune systems of many organisms, including vertebrates, invertebrates, plants and microbes. Scorpion v...
Oxazole-containing peptides are mostly of marine origin and they form an intriguing family with a broad range of biological activities. Here we classify these peptides on the basis of their chemical structure and discuss a number of representatives o...
The marine environment presents a favorable avenue for potential therapeutic agents as a reservoir of new bioactive natural products. Due to their numerous potential pharmacological effects, marine-derived natural products—particularly marine p...
With the demand for more efficient and safer therapeutic drugs, targeted therapeutic peptides are well received due to their advantages of high targeting (specificity), low immunogenicity, and minimal side effects. However, the conventional methods o...
Anticancer peptides (ACPs) could potentially offer many advantages over other cancer therapies. ACPs often target cell membranes, where their surface mechanism is coupled to a conformational change into helical structures. However, details on their b...
Bark beetle-associated bacteria from the sub-boreal and boreal forests of northern Canada represent a largely unexplored source of bioactive natural products. This study aims to investigate the chemical potential of bacteria isolated from Dendroctonu...
Historically, ligase activity by proteases was theoretically derived due to their catalyst nature, and it was experimentally observed as early as around 1900. Initially, the digestive proteases, such as pepsin, chymotrypsin, and trypsin were employed...
Natural angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)-inhibitory peptides, which are derived from marine products, are useful as antihypertensive drugs. Nevertheless, the activities of these natural peptides are relatively low, which limits their applications....
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