Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel aliphatic acid-conjugated antimicrobial peptides as potential agents with anti-tumor, multidrug resistance-reversing activity and enhanced stability.

Compared with traditional anti-tumor drugs, antimicrobial peptides as novel anti-tumor agents have prominent advantages of higher specificity and circumvention of multi-drug resistance. BP100 is a multifunctional membrane-active peptide with high antimicrobial activity. Taking BP100 as a lead peptide, we designed and synthesized a series of aliphatic chain-conjugated peptides through solid-phase synthesis. Biological evaluation revealed that these peptides exhibited better anti-cancer activity than BP100. Further investigations revealed that these peptides could disrupt the cell membrane and trigger the cytochrome C release into cytoplasm, which ultimately resulted in apoptosis. Meanwhile, these peptides also exhibited effective anti-tumor activity against multidrug resistant cells and had multidrug resistance-reversing effect. Additionally, conjugation of aliphatic acid to those peptides could enhance their stability in plasma. In conclusion, aliphatic acid-modified peptides might be promising anti-tumor agents for cancer therapy.