Tatyana Ovchinnikova

The rapid spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens poses an urgent challenge for the scientific community to develop new anti-infective drugs. The main direction of scientific research is the study of molecular factors of the innate immunity system, in particular, protective peptides of animal, plant and bacterial origin. In recent years, these compounds have attracted close attention of researchers as an alternative to traditional antibiotics due to their ability to quickly destroy a wide range of multi-resistant pathogens and a special molecular mechanism of action that prevents the development of resistance in microorganisms. Bioinformatics search in genomic and transcriptome databases for new structural families of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and study of the mechanism of their action on bacteria open the way for the creation of new antibiotics. The objectives of the study include obtaining recombinant AMPs, studying their structure, biological properties and molecular mechanism of action, as well as designing their analogues with more pronounced antimicrobial activity and low toxicity against normal human cells. In particular, peptide translation inhibitors are highly effective in suppressing pathogens, and the emergence of bacterial cross-resistance is less likely. The relatively low cytotoxicity of peptide translation inhibitors allows us to consider them as a promising basis for the development of new generation antibiotics. A number of candidate compounds are being studied in animal models of infectious diseases. The interaction between various AMPs and conventional antibiotics in the joint action on bacterial cells is studied, the possibility of forming resistance to AMPs and ways to overcome it are analyzed.