Anti-Protozoan Activities of Polar Fish-Derived Polyalanine Synthetic Peptides

oleh: Ellynes Amancio Correia Nunes, Maria Cláudia da Silva, Marlon Henrique Cardoso, Sergio Leandro Espíndola Preza, Lucas Silva de Oliveira, Breno Emanuel Farias Frihling, Sébastien Olivier Charneau, Philippe Grellier, Octávio Luiz Franco, Ludovico Migliolo

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2023-07-01

Deskripsi

Chagas disease, sleeping sickness and malaria are infectious diseases caused by protozoan parasites that kill millions of people worldwide. Here, we performed in vitro assays of <i>Pa-MAP</i>, <i>Pa-MAP1.9</i>, and <i>Pa-MAP2</i> synthetic polyalanine peptides derived from the polar fish <i>Pleuronectes americanus</i> toward <i>Trypanosoma cruzi</i>, <i>T. brucei gambiense</i> and <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i> activities. We demonstrated that the peptides <i>Pa-MAP1.9</i> and <i>Pa-MAP2</i> were effective to inhibit <i>T. brucei</i> growth. In addition, structural analyses using molecular dynamics (MD) studies showed that <i>Pa-MAP2</i> penetrates deeper into the membrane and interacts more with phospholipids than <i>Pa-MAP1.9</i>, corroborating the previous in vitro results showing that <i>Pa-MAP1.9</i> acts within the cell, while <i>Pa-MAP2</i> acts via membrane lysis. In conclusion, polyalanine <i>Pa-MAP1.9</i> and <i>Pa-MAP2</i> presented activity against bloodstream forms of <i>T. b. gambiense</i>, thus encouraging further studies on the application of these peptides as a treatment for sleeping sickness.