Patents

The invention articulates the design of a novel set of short antimicrobial peptides, namely LRP, FRP, VRP and ARP, on the basis of an amphipathic heptad repeat sequence by incorporating either leucine or yalanine or valine or alanine respectively, at the "a" and "d" positions of the heptad. Another novel peptide, VPRP was designed by substituting two valine residues at a "d" and an adjacent "a" position of VRP heptad. All these peptides show potent bactericidal and fungicidal activities. Of these peptides, VRP, ARP and VPRP were significantly non-toxic against human red blood cells and rat fibroblast 3T3 cells; therefore, these peptides are of high therapeutic index. Among these peptides, VRP and its analogue VPRP turned out as very potent molecules against leishmania; it appeared that these two peptides possess better activity (in terms of in vitro antileishmanial activity and toxicity against mammalian cells) than the standard antileishmanial agent, "sodium antimony gluconate" and thus could be excellent lead molecules for the development of anti-leishmanial drug.