The Role of Metals in Anti-Infective Agents

The indiscriminate use of antibiotics has led to a huge increase in antibiotic resistance, encouraging the scientific community towards the search for new classes of antibiotics. In this respect, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) represent a skilled class of therapeutic agents, due to their broad activity, rapid killing, low bacterial resistance, and ease of synthesis. Metal ions, which have a long history of antimicrobial activity, have received great attention as potential antimicrobial agents, too. The combined use of metal-AMP could prove to be an unexplored class of antibiotics, useful to combat bacterial, parasitic, fungal, or viral infections.

This Research Topic aims to describe and discuss the recent advances in the discovery, characterization, development, and application of metal-AMP-based anti-infective agents, covering bacterial, fungal, viral, and parasitic infections. The aim is to stimulate research interest in this field, starting from the knowledge of the structural characteristics of the metal-peptide coordination up to recent applications as the incorporation of metal binding units in peptide sequences.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial peptides, metals and bacteria, metal coordination, metallophores

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.