Peptide index

The cyclic peptide antibiotic in almost every tube of over-the-counter wound ointment, effective against gram-positive skin flora topically and far too nephrotoxic to inject.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A myristoylated 47-amino-acid lipopeptide that plugs the NTCP receptor hepatitis D uses to get into liver cells — the first and only approved treatment for chronic hepatitis delta, the deadliest form of viral hepatitis.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

The first echinocandin antifungal, a cyclic lipopeptide that dissolves the fungal cell wall and is first-line intravenous therapy for invasive candidiasis and candidaemia.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

The other polymyxin, given as an inactive prodrug that converts to active colistin in the body, revived as salvage therapy for carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas and Klebsiella.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A lipoglycopeptide with a two-week half-life, meaning a single intravenous dose can treat an entire skin infection and send the patient home without a line.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A calcium-dependent cyclic lipopeptide that punches holes in the gram-positive cell membrane, used mainly for MRSA bacteraemia and skin infection — and never for pneumonia, because lung surfactant destroys it.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A 36-amino-acid peptide that jams the HIV envelope's fusion machinery shut, the first peptide antiretroviral ever approved and still a salvage option in multidrug-resistant HIV.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A channel-forming linear pentadecapeptide, the first antibiotic ever used clinically, now confined to topical and eye-drop combinations because it destroys red blood cells if it reaches the bloodstream.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

The pore-forming peptide that makes up about half of dry bee venom, genuinely lytic against bacteria, viruses and tumour cells — and equally lytic against human red blood cells, which is why it has never become a drug.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

An echinocandin antifungal with the cleanest drug-interaction profile of the class, used for candidaemia, oesophageal candidiasis and antifungal prophylaxis in stem-cell transplant.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A bacteriocin from cheese-making lactococci that has been eaten safely as a food preservative since the 1950s and is being re-examined as an oral gram-positive antimicrobial and microbiome tool.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A cationic 12-mer derived from a bovine neutrophil peptide, trialled as a topical gel for catheter-site infection, rosacea, acne and HPV-related lesions without ever clearing a phase 3 endpoint.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A single-dose lipoglycopeptide with three separate mechanisms against gram-positive bacteria, useful for one-and-done skin infection treatment but notorious for scrambling coagulation lab tests for days afterwards.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A frog-skin-derived antimicrobial peptide developed as a topical cream for infected diabetic foot ulcers, rejected twice by the FDA because it never beat existing treatment.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A 1940s cyclic lipopeptide shelved for decades because of kidney toxicity and dragged back into use as a last-resort agent against carbapenem-resistant gram-negative bacteria.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A once-weekly echinocandin engineered for chemical stability, approved for candidaemia and invasive candidiasis in patients with limited alternatives.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A soil-bacterium depsipeptide discovered in 2015 that binds two different cell wall precursors at once and has so far failed to select for resistance in the laboratory — still entirely preclinical.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

A once-daily vancomycin derivative with added membrane activity, approved for complicated skin infection and hospital-acquired pneumonia but carrying boxed warnings for kidney damage and fetal harm that have kept it a third-line drug.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides

The global workhorse glycopeptide antibiotic for MRSA and severe gram-positive infection, given intravenously for systemic disease and orally — where it is not absorbed at all — for C. difficile colitis.

Antimicrobial & Antiviral Peptides