Rational design of bifunctional chimeric peptides that combine antimicrobial and titanium binding activity

February 8, 2023

Title

Rational design of bifunctional chimeric peptides that combine antimicrobial and titanium binding activity

Author

Marco Drexelius, Rebekka Arnold, Denise Meinberger, Michael Wilhelm, Sanjay Mathur, Ines Neundorf

Year

2023

Journal

Peptide science

Abstract

Bacterial biofilm formation remains a serious problem for clinical materials and often leads to implant failure. To counteract bacterial adhesion, which initiates biofilm formation, the development of antibiotic surface coating strategies is of high demand and warrants further investigations. In this study, we have created bifunctional chimeric peptides by fusing the recently developed antimicrobial peptide MGD2 (GLRKRLRKFFNKIKF) with different titanium-binding sequences. The novel peptides were investigated regarding their antibacterial potential against a set of different bacterial strains including drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. All peptides showed high antimicrobial activities both when in solution and when immobilized on titanium surfaces. Owing to the ease of synthesis and handling, the herein described peptides might be a true alternative to prevent bacterial biofilm formation.

Instrument

J-715

Keywords

biofunctional chimeric peptides, biofilm, MGD2