Selective killing of Helicobacter pylori with pH-responsive helix-coil conformation transitionable antimicrobial polypeptides.

ABSTRACT: Current clinical treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection, the main etiological factor in the development of gastritis, gastric ulcers, and gastric carcinoma, requires a combination of at least two antibiotics and one proton pump inhibitor. However, such triple therapy suffers from progressively decreased therapeutic efficacy due to the drug resistance and undesired killing of the commensal bacteria due to poor selectivity. Here, we report the development of antimicrobial polypeptide-based monotherapy, which can specifically kill H. pylori under acidic pH in the stomach while inducing minimal toxicity to commensal bacteria under physiological pH. Specifically, we designed a class of pH-sensitive, helix-coil conformation transitionable antimicrobial polypeptides (HCT-AMPs) (

SUBMITTER: Xiong M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5715757 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature