New antibiotic compounds found in human body

Boston: Scientists have found compounds in the human body with potent antimicrobial effects, that may lead to the development of new drugs and help leverage mankind's fight against superbugs. The human body produces many antimicrobial peptides that help the immune system fend off infection. Scientists are hoping to harness these peptides as potential antibiotics. Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT) in the US and the University of Naples Federico II in Italy found that fragments of the protein pepsinogen, an enzyme used to digest food in the stomach, can kill bacteria such as Salmonella and E coli. They believe that by modifying these peptides to enhance their antimicrobial activity, they may be able to develop synthetic peptides that could be used as antibiotics against drugresistant bacteria. “These peptides really constitute a great template for engineering. The idea now is to use synthetic biology to modify them further and make them more potent,” said Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez, from MIT. Antimicrobial peptides, which are found in nearly all living organisms, can kill many microbes, but they are typically not powerful enough to act as antibiotic drugs on their own. Many scientists have been exploring ways to create more potent versions of these peptides, in hopes of finding new weapons to combat the growing problem. In the study published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology, the researchers wanted to explore whether other proteins found in the human body, outside of the previously known antimicrobial peptides, might also be able to kill bacteria.