1 An aspect of concern in the development pipeline has been the efficient delivery of the drug to the site of action: this has been puzzling pharmacologists and chemists for a while, and the aim to overcome these hurdles has inspired the work of synthetic biologists and material scientists. Introduction For most of the last century, the development of new drugs has focused on the paradigm that a drug is a small inorganic compound (of mass up to 900 Da), which intervenes with a specific target (usually a protein) of a mammal or bacterial cell.Ĭhallenges have included identifying a target unambiguously, especially when the drug binds to proteins assembled in complexes or to a number of closely related gene products. The stability and the activity of the antimicrobial β-annulus capsule is measured by molecular dynamics simulations in water and in the presence of model membranes. The proposed design exploits a β-annulus (sequence ITHVGGVGGSIMAPVAVSRQLVGS) triskelion unit from the Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus, able to self assemble in solution, and functionalised with antimicrobial sequences to form dodecahedral antimicrobial nanocapsules. Additionally, the chemical versatility of the designed units can be tailored to specific targets and to the delivery of genetic material in the cell. We propose here a novel approach that exploits the assembly of antimicrobial peptidic units in nanocapsules that can penetrate and rupture the bacterial membrane. The challenges are in finding novel approaches for effectively targeting a number of different bacterial strains, and in delivering these to the site of action.

Antimicrobial resistance is becoming a serious burden for drug design.

Tuning the anchoring fd viruses