Functional immunopeptides: advancing prevention and therapeutic strategies against animal diseases

Abstract Peptide-based therapies have emerged as groundbreaking advancements in both therapeutic and preventive strategies against infectious diseases. These approaches utilize innovative functional immunopeptides—such as antigenic peptides, antimicrobial, immune modulation, and delivery peptides derived from pathogens or hosts—to target specific immune mechanisms. In addition to their simplicity of use, peptide-based approaches provide several advantages. These include improved specificity and immunogenicity by targeting specific antigenic peptides and enhanced delivery of particular proteins or vaccines to targeted immune cells, which increases the efficiency of antigen presentation and provides a self-adjuvant effect and therapeutic properties. The most recent developments in peptide-based systems to increase vaccine efficacy and therapeutic interventions for animal diseases are investigated in this review. It encompasses fundamental ideas, immunomodulating functions, and peptide production techniques. Additionally, the improvements and synergistic advantages attained by combining these functional immunopeptides with vaccines or using them as stand-alone therapeutic agents are emphasized. This review demonstrates how peptide-based treatments in veterinary medicine enhance immune responses and inhibit or eliminate pathogens.