Peptide drugs hold great potential for the treatment of infectious diseases due to their unconventional mechanisms of action, biocompatibility, biodegradability and ease of synthesis and modification. The increasing rising of bacterial strains resistant to classical antibiotics have pushed the development of new peptide-based antimicrobial therapies. In this context, over the past few years, different approaches have reached a clinical approval. Furthermore, the application of nanotechnological principles to the design of antimicrobial peptide-based composites increases even more the already known benefits of antimicrobial peptides as competent protein drugs. Then, we provide here an overview of the current strategies for antimicrobial peptide discovery and modification and the status of such peptides already under clinical development. In addition, we summarize the innovative formulation strategies for their application, focusing on the controlled self-assembly for the fabrication of antimicrobial nanostructures without the assistance of external nanocarriers, and with emphasis on bioengineering, design of ultra-short peptides and rising insights in bacterial selectivity.

肽类药物因其非常规的作用机理，生物相容性，生物降解性以及易于合成和修饰而在治疗传染病方面具有巨大潜力。对经典抗生素具有抗性的细菌菌株的不断增加推动了新的基于肽的抗菌疗法的发展。在这种情况下，在过去的几年中，不同的方法已获得临床认可。此外，将纳米技术原理应用于基于抗菌肽的复合材料的设计进一步增加了抗菌肽作为有效蛋白质药物的已知优势。然后，我们在这里概述了抗菌肽发现和修饰的当前策略以及此类肽在临床开发中的状态。