Antiviral Peptides: Identification and Validation

Abstract

Despite rapid advances in the human healthcare, the infection caused by certain viruses results in high morbidity and mortality accentuate the importance for development of new antivirals. The existing antiviral drugs are limited, due to their inadequate response, increased rate of resistance and several adverse side effects. Therefore, one of the newly emerging field "peptide-based therapeutics" against viruses is being explored and seems promising. Over the last few years, a lot of scientific effort has been made for the identification of novel and potential peptide-based therapeutics using various advanced technologies. Consequently, there are more than 60 approved peptide drugs available for sale in the market of United States, Europe, Japan, and some Asian countries. Moreover, the number of peptide drugs undergoing the clinical trials is rising gradually year by year. The peptide-based antiviral therapeutics have been approved for the Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Influenza virus and Hepatitis virus (B and C). This review enlightens the various peptide sources and the different approaches that have contributed to the search of potential antiviral peptides. These include computational approaches, natural and biological sources (library based high throughput screening) for the identification of lead peptide molecules against their target. Further the applications of few advanced techniques based on combinatorial chemistry and molecular biology have been illustrated to measure the binding parameters such as affinity and kinetics of the screened interacting partners. The employment of these advanced techniques can contribute to investigate antiviral peptide therapeutics for emerging infections.

SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-, main protease- and papain-like-protease-targeting peptides from seed proteins following gastrointestinal digestion: An in silico study

“…Food peptides exhibit diverse bioactivities, including antiviral activity ( Agarwal and Gabrani, 2020 ). The potential of food-derived peptides in the development of nutraceuticals and functional foods is well-recognized ( Chai et al., 2017 ; Wong et al., 2020b ).…”

Perspectives in Peptide-Based Vaccination Strategies for Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Pandemic

“…We also focused on structural viral proteins being these the most involved when designing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Recently, alternative and more selective viral therapies based on peptides have been established ( Agarwal and Gabrani, 2020 ; Brice and Diamond, 2020 ; Kalita et al, 2020 ). Peptides are excellent lead compounds for their high specificity even if they present poor plasma stability and oral bioavailability ( Conibear et al, 2020 ).…”

“…H beta CoVs shows a great variability in M proteins with a similarity of only 26.087% and around 60% of overlapped regions. As to N protein, in SARS-CoV, CoV-2 and MERS alignment the similarity increases up to around 40% ( Coronaviridae Study Group ICTV, 2020 ; Gussow et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Moreover, it is also involved in assembly, growth and complete virion formation ( Tooze et al, 1984 ; Klumperman et al, 1994 ; Siu et al, 2008 ). Human beta CoV N proteins’ alignment shows that viruses have only 99 similar positons and 83 identical one,with a similarity of 17.256% that increases up to 40.492% for SARS-CoV/CoV-2 and MERS viruses ( Coronaviridae Study Group ICTV, 2020 ).…”

A Global Review on Short Peptides: Frontiers and Perspectives

“…As an example, encapsulation of curcumin in the form of nanocarrier can be used in a “controllable release” way to repair brain tissues as a promising drug in neurodegenerative diseases [ 101 ]. Moreover, ultra-short peptides are suitable for many bioapplications, innovative nano-theranostics (either therapeutic or diagnostic), especially in cancer cell growth inhibition, and advanced smart system formulations [ 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 ]. The latter include oral administration which increases drug efficacy and safety.…”