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Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy

Defensins are the most widespread antimicrobial peptides characterised in insects. These cyclic peptides, 4–6 kDa in size, are folded into α-helical/β-sheet mixed structures and have a common conserved motif of three intramolecular disulfide bridges with a Cys1-Cys4, Cys2-Cys5 and Cys3-Cys6 connecti...

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Autores principales: Čeřovský, Václav, Bém, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3978492/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24583934
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ph7030251
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author Čeřovský, Václav
Bém, Robert
author_facet Čeřovský, Václav
Bém, Robert
author_sort Čeřovský, Václav
collection PubMed
description Defensins are the most widespread antimicrobial peptides characterised in insects. These cyclic peptides, 4–6 kDa in size, are folded into α-helical/β-sheet mixed structures and have a common conserved motif of three intramolecular disulfide bridges with a Cys1-Cys4, Cys2-Cys5 and Cys3-Cys6 connectivity. They have the ability to kill especially Gram-positive bacteria and some fungi, but Gram-negative bacteria are more resistant against them. Among them are the medicinally important compounds lucifensin and lucifensin II, which have recently been identified in the medicinal larvae of the blowflies Lucilia sericata and Lucilia cuprina, respectively. These defensins contribute to wound healing during a procedure known as maggot debridement therapy (MDT) which is routinely used at hospitals worldwide. Here we discuss the decades-long story of the effort to isolate and characterise these two defensins from the bodies of medicinal larvae or from their secretions/excretions. Furthermore, our previous studies showed that the free-range larvae of L. sericata acutely eliminated most of the Gram-positive strains of bacteria and some Gram-negative strains in patients with infected diabetic foot ulcers, but MDT was ineffective during the healing of wounds infected with Pseudomonas sp. and Acinetobacter sp. The bactericidal role of lucifensins secreted into the infected wound by larvae during MDT and its ability to enhance host immunity by functioning as immunomodulator is also discussed.
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spelling pubmed-39784922014-04-08 Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy Čeřovský, Václav Bém, Robert Pharmaceuticals (Basel) Review Defensins are the most widespread antimicrobial peptides characterised in insects. These cyclic peptides, 4–6 kDa in size, are folded into α-helical/β-sheet mixed structures and have a common conserved motif of three intramolecular disulfide bridges with a Cys1-Cys4, Cys2-Cys5 and Cys3-Cys6 connectivity. They have the ability to kill especially Gram-positive bacteria and some fungi, but Gram-negative bacteria are more resistant against them. Among them are the medicinally important compounds lucifensin and lucifensin II, which have recently been identified in the medicinal larvae of the blowflies Lucilia sericata and Lucilia cuprina, respectively. These defensins contribute to wound healing during a procedure known as maggot debridement therapy (MDT) which is routinely used at hospitals worldwide. Here we discuss the decades-long story of the effort to isolate and characterise these two defensins from the bodies of medicinal larvae or from their secretions/excretions. Furthermore, our previous studies showed that the free-range larvae of L. sericata acutely eliminated most of the Gram-positive strains of bacteria and some Gram-negative strains in patients with infected diabetic foot ulcers, but MDT was ineffective during the healing of wounds infected with Pseudomonas sp. and Acinetobacter sp. The bactericidal role of lucifensins secreted into the infected wound by larvae during MDT and its ability to enhance host immunity by functioning as immunomodulator is also discussed. MDPI 2014-02-27 /pmc/articles/PMC3978492/ /pubmed/24583934 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ph7030251 Text en © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Čeřovský, Václav
Bém, Robert
Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy
title Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy
title_full Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy
title_fullStr Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy
title_full_unstemmed Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy
title_short Lucifensins, the Insect Defensins of Biomedical Importance: The Story behind Maggot Therapy
title_sort lucifensins, the insect defensins of biomedical importance: the story behind maggot therapy
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3978492/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24583934
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ph7030251
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