Antimicrobial peptides: natural templates for next-generation therapeutics against antimicrobial resistance

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an escalating global health crisis causing nearly five million deaths annually and expected to worsen as existing antibiotics lose effectiveness, driven by misuse, weak regulation, limited prevention, high costs, and a thin discovery pipeline; in response, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs)—natural, synthetic, and computationally designed—are emerging as promising next-generation therapeutics due to their broad antimicrobial and immunomodulatory activity, diverse mechanisms of action, and lower propensity for resistance, with recent advances in chemical modification, recombinant production, nanotechnology, and AI-based design improving their stability, bioavailability, and efficacy, although challenges such as degradation, short half-life, manufacturing costs, and microbial defense mechanisms remain to be addressed.