Alpha-Helical Antimicrobial Peptide Mimic with Cationic Facially Amphiphilic Side Chains for Treatment of MultiDrug-Resistant Bacterial Infection

After the advent of modern antibiotics to fight microbial pathogens, drug-resistant microbes began to emerge more and more frequently as an evolutionary response to the use of antibiotics. This provides a substantial threat to the treatment of infectious disease as new drugs must be developed faster than bacteria can build up a resistance to them. In recent years, antimicrobial polymers that are modeled after antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been developed to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Antimicrobial polymers are especially promising in fighting against the mechanisms of resistance that bacteria express against conventional antibiotics because antimicrobial polymers act through total disruption of the bacterial cell membrane, as opposed to most antibiotics which target biological pathways that bacteria rely on for survival. This research seeks to study the effectiveness of an antimicrobial polymer developed by combining two different types of amphiphilicity: peptide secondary structure, and cholic acid inherent facial amphiphilicity. Preliminary testing shows that the conjugate polymer shows activity against gram-positive sensitive bacteria strain, and moderately effective against gram-positive multi-drug-resistant bacteria. The polymer’s activity can be further tuned by optimizing carbon spacer as well as the percentage of conjugation.