Ever since the discovery of insulin, natural peptides have become an important resource for therapeutic development. Decades of research has led to the discovery of a long list of peptide drugs with broad applications in clinics, from antibiotics to hypertension treatment to pain management. Many of these US FDA-approved peptide drugs are derived from microorganisms and animals. By contrast, the great potential of plant cyclic peptides as therapeutics remains largely unexplored. These macrocyclic peptides typically have rigid structures, good bioavailability and membrane permeability, making them appealing candidates for drug development and engineering. In this review, we introduce the three major classes of plant cyclic peptides and summarize their potential medical applications. We discuss how we can leverage the genome information of many different plants to quickly search for new cyclic peptides and how we can take advantage of the insights gained from their biosynthetic pathways to transform the process of production and drug development. These recent developments have provided a new angle for exploring and exploiting plant cyclic peptides, and we believe that many more peptide drugs derived from plants are about to come.

中文翻译：

---

探索和开发用于药物发现和开发的植物环肽

自从发现胰岛素以来，天然肽已成为治疗开发的重要资源。数十年的研究导致发现了一长串在临床中具有广泛应用的肽药物，从抗生素到高血压治疗再到疼痛管理。这些美国 FDA 批准的肽药物中有许多来源于微生物和动物。相比之下，植物环肽作为治疗剂的巨大潜力在很大程度上仍未得到探索。这些大环肽通常具有刚性结构、良好的生物利用度和膜渗透性，使其成为药物开发和工程的有吸引力的候选者。在这篇综述中，我们介绍了三大类植物环肽并总结了它们的潜在医学应用。我们讨论了如何利用许多不同植物的基因组信息来快速寻找新的环肽，以及我们如何利用从它们的生物合成途径中获得的见解来改变生产和药物开发的过程。这些最新进展为探索和利用植物环肽提供了新的视角，我们相信更多的植物源肽药物即将问世。