Selected application of peptide molecules as pharmaceutical agents and in cosmeceuticals

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Peptide molecules are being vastly investigated as an emerging class of therapeutic molecules in recent years. Currently, 60 peptides have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and more would enter the market in near future. Peptides have already opened their ways into cosmeceutical and food industries as well.

Areas covered: Antibodies, vaccines, and antimicrobial agents are the major classes of therapeutic peptides. Additionally, peptides may be employed in drug development to support cell penetration or targeting. The interest in antimicrobial peptides is surging due to the increasing risk of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Peptide vaccines with their significant advantages compared with traditional vaccines, are expected to find their place in coming years, especially for cancer, microbial and allergen-specific immunotherapy. The usage of peptides in cosmeceuticals is also growing rapidly.

Expert opinion: Peptide synthesis has become accessible, and advances in peptide engineering, sequencing technologies, and structural bioinformatics have resulted in the rational designing of novel peptides. All these advancements would lead to the more prominent roles of peptides in the mentioned areas. In this review, we discuss applications of peptides in different fields including pharmaceuticals, cosmeceuticals, besides the critical factors in designing efficient peptide molecules.

KEYWORDS:

• Peptide molecules
• pharmaceuticals
• cosmeceuticals
• drug design
• peptide vaccine

Article highlights

• In recent years, the number of FDA approved peptide molecules have been increased considerably, which shows the growing application of peptides for biomedical, pharmaceutical, and cosmeceuticals purposes.

• Peptide-based vaccines including microbial vaccines, cancer vaccines, and allergy vaccines due to their cost- effective production, safety, stability under different conditions have been draw much attention, recently.

• Self-assembled peptide nanoparticles (SAPNs) are new generation of peptides molecules, which mainly consists of beta sheet and/or alpha helical structures, able to assemble into nanostructures that can be used in wide-range of biomedical applications such as vaccine construction, hydrogel formation, tissue engineering, drug delivery, and many others.

• Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are short peptides (~5–30 amino acids) that are able to pass through tissues and plasma membranes. They can carry a broad range of cargos, including peptides, DNA, RNA, and small agents. They are categorized based on various features such as physiochemical structure, origin, function, and uptake mechanism.

• Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are short oligopeptides, that obtain from different sources, including animals, plants, bacteria, and insects. In recent years, due to the emergence of antibiotic resistance pathogens, AMPs can be applied as the efficient alternative to antibiotics.

• Nowadays, the engineered peptide molecules are used in different cosmetic products. Such peptides are mainly classified into five types, including signal peptides, carrier peptides, neurotransmitter inhibitor peptides, enzyme inhibitor peptides, and the peptides derived from the digestion of structural proteins.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer Disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial relationships or otherwise to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (3435).