Abstract
Cationic peptides proved fundamental importance as pharmaceutical agents and/or drug carrier moieties functioning in cellular processes. The comparison of the in vitro activity of these peptides is an experimental challenge and a combination of different methods, such as cytotoxicity, internalisation rate, haemolytic and antibacterial effect, is necessary. At the same time, several issues need to be addressed as the assay conditions have a great influence on the measured biological effects and the experimental setup needs to be optimised. Therefore, critical comparison of results from different assays using representative examples of cell penetrating and antimicrobial peptides was performed and optimal test conditions were suggested. Our main goal was to identify carrier peptides for drug delivery systems of antimicrobial drug candidates. Based on the results of internalisation, haemolytic, cytotoxic and antibacterial activity assays, a classification of cationic peptides is advocated. We found eight promising carrier peptides with good penetration ability of which Penetratin, Tat, Buforin and Dhvar4 peptides showed low adverse haemolytic effect. Penetratin, Transportan, Dhvar4 and the hybrid CM15 peptide had the most potent antibacterial activity on Streptococcus pneumoniae (MIC lower than 1.2 μM) and Transportan was effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis as well. The most selective peptide was the Penetratin, where the effective antimicrobial concentration on pneumococcus was more than 250 times lower than the HC50 value. Therefore, these peptides and their analogues will be further investigated as drug delivery systems for antimicrobial agents.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Hungarian Research Fund (115431 and 104275) and by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (bo_87_15). The authors thank Dr. Hedvig Medzihradszky-Schweiger for the amino acid analysis and Mr. Sándor Dávid for the antimycobacterial testing.
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This study was funded by the Hungarian Research Fund (115431 and 104275) and by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (bo_87_15).
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Horváti, K., Bacsa, B., Mlinkó, T. et al. Comparative analysis of internalisation, haemolytic, cytotoxic and antibacterial effect of membrane-active cationic peptides: aspects of experimental setup. Amino Acids 49, 1053–1067 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-017-2402-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-017-2402-9