Smart nanocarriers for antimicrobial peptides: Bridging agriculture and medicine through a unified pathogen-responsive delivery framework

The escalating threat of multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens in both clinical and agricultural systems underscores the urgent need for a unified, cross-disciplinary strategy. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), nature’s evolutionarily conserved defense molecules, offer broad-spectrum activity against diverse pathogens with minimal risk of resistance development. However, their clinical and agronomic applications are constrained by instability, rapid degradation, and poor target specificity. Recent advances in nanotechnology provide a transformative avenue to overcome these barriers. This review explores the emerging paradigm of smart, pathogen-responsive nanocarriers designed to protect and deliver AMPs derived particularly from insect sources. These intelligent delivery systems are engineered to release their payload in response to microbial cues—such as enzymatic activity or pH changes—thereby enhancing stability, specificity, and therapeutic efficacy. By integrating insights from entomology, materials science, and molecular medicine, this work proposes a holistic “One Health” framework linking human, animal, and plant pathogen control. The convergence of nanocarrier engineering and AMP biology has the potential to advance antimicrobial therapy across sectors, offering a sustainable, cross-domain solution to the global antimicrobial resistance crisis.