An insect antibacterial peptide-based drug delivery system.

Abstract

The ability of the short, proline-rich native antibacterial peptides to penetrate bacterial and host cells suggests the utility of these transport systems in delivering peptidic cargo into cells. We studied the uptake of pyrrhocoricin and its most potent dimeric analogue by bacteria as well as human dendritic cells and fibroblasts. Native pyrrhocoricin entered the susceptible organism Escherichia coli very efficiently and the nonsusceptible bacterium Staphylococcus aureus to a significant degree. The antibacterial peptide also penetrated human monocyte-derived dendritic cells. It failed, however, to enter fibroblasts, whereas the designer analogue Pip-pyrr-MeArg dimer penetrated all the cell..