During the past several years, many strains of bacteria have become resistant to existing antibiotics, and very few new drugs have been added to the antibiotic arsenal.To help combat this growing public health problem, some scientists are exploring antimicrobial peptides -- naturally occurring peptides found in most organisms. Most of these are not powerful enough to fight off infections in humans, so researchers are trying to come up with new, more potent versions. Researchers at MIT and the Catholic University of Brasilia have now developed a streamlined approach to developing such drugs.
Their new strategy, which relies on a computer algorithm that mimics the natural process of evolution, has already yielded one potential drug candidate that successfully killed bacteria in mice. Antimicrobial peptides kill microbes in many different ways. They enter microbial cells by damaging their…
