Multipronged approach for engineering novel peptide analogues of existing lantibiotics

Abstract

Introduction: Lantibiotics are a class of ribosomally and post-translationally modified peptide antibiotics that are active against a broad spectrum of Gram-positive bacteria. Great efforts have been made to promote the production of these antibiotics, so that they can one day be used in our antimicrobial arsenal to combat multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.

Areas covered: This review provides a synopsis of lantibiotic research aimed at furthering our understanding of the structural limitation of lantibiotics as well as identifying structural regions that can be modified to improve the bioactivity. In vivo, in vitro and chemical synthesis of lantibiotics has been useful for engineering novel variants with enhanced activities. These approaches have provided novel ways to further our understanding of lantibiotic function and have advanced the objective to develop lantibiotics for the treatment of infectious diseases.

Expert opinion: Synthesis of lantibiotics with enhanced activities will lead to the discovery of new promising drug candidates that will have a long lasting impact on the treatment of Gram-positive infections. The current body of literature for producing structural variants of lantibiotics has been more of a ‘proof-of-principle’ approach and the application of these methods has not yet been fully utilized.

Keywords:

• chemical synthesis
• in vitro synthesis
• in vivo synthesis
• lanthipeptide
• lantibiotics

Declaration of interest

L Smith worked 9 years ago for Oragenics Inc. and consulted for them until 2 years ago. They have also licensed technology generated from their lab. J Escano is supported by Principal Investigator L Smith with Texas A&M start-up funds. 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.

Notes

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