The increasing rate of antibiotic resistance constitutes a global health crisis. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have the property to selectively kill bacteria regardless of resistance to traditional antibiotics. However, several challenges (e.g., reduced activity in the presence of serum and lack of efficacy in vivo) to clinical development need to be overcome. In the last two decades, we have addressed many of those challenges by engineering cationic AMPs de novo for optimization under test conditions that typically inhibit the activities of natural AMPs, including systemic efficacy. We reviewed some of the most promising data of the last two decades in the context of the advancement of the field of helical AMPs toward clinical development.

中文翻译：

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工程化的阳离子抗菌肽（eCAP），可抵抗多药耐药细菌。

抗生素耐药性的增加构成了全球健康危机。抗菌肽（AMPs）具有选择性杀灭细菌的特性，而不管对传统抗生素的抗性如何。然而，需要克服对临床发展的若干挑战（例如，在血清存在下活性降低和体内缺乏功效）。在过去的二十年中，我们通过重新设计阳离子AMPs来应对许多挑战，以优化在通常会抑制天然AMPs活性（包括系统功效）的测试条件下进行优化。在螺旋AMP领域向临床发展的过程中，我们回顾了过去二十年中一些最有希望的数据。