Scorpion Venom-Based Peptides as Potential Therapeutics Against Bacterial Infections

Many human diseases worldwide are due to bacterial infection, and the current standard of care is antibiotic treatment. One of the biggest and most-pressing problems of the modern medicine is the rapid development of microbial antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is developed due to short generation cycles, mutation, and improper use of prescribed antibiotics. Without the development of new therapeutic solutions soon, bacterial diseases may become completely resistant to antibiotics and mortality and sickness will increase. Peptide therapeutics have grown popular over the past decade because of their wide applications in medicine and biotechnology. Therefore, developing new effective and specific agents is urgently needed to provide alternate therapeutic molecules to treat bacterial infections. Antimicrobial peptides, isolated from living species, are potential broad-spectrum antibacterial agents. Scorpion venom contains a mixture of peptides and proteins with varied bioactivities and receives great attention due to their potential application in peptide drug design and development. In this research, scorpion venom peptides were chemically synthesized using standard Fmoc-based synthesis protocols and tested their antimicrobial activity against known bacterial and fungal pathogens. The synthesized peptides are purified and characterized by mass spectrometry. AVP1701 peptide was eluted at 4.9 min and showed two intense peaks at m/z 1130.61 and 585.8109 which correspond to [M+H]+ and [M+2H]2+ charge states, respectively. Moreover, AVP2053 peptides was eluted at 5.7 min and showed two intense peaks related to their masses. A highly concentrated solution of peptides (AVP1701 and AVP2053) in various concentrations of DMSO were tested against various bacterial infection diseases using the Kirby-Bauer Disk Diffusion Susceptibility Test. Bacterial inhibition with AVP1701 was observed against the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa 01 and Escherichia coli, a common intestinal inhabitant. Broth dilutions and an expansive screen of the peptides against other pathogens is underway which will determine the minimum inhibitory concentration