Journal of Antimicrobial Agents

The Role of Antimicrobial Peptides in Lung Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Swithenbank L, Morgan C

Lung cancer is a major health burden accounting for 1.59 million deaths worldwide. For both sub-types of lung cancer (NSCLC and SCLC), chemotherapy is an option. However, success is limited and side effects are detrimental to an individuals’ overall quality of life. To complicate matters further, cancer cells can develop resistance to chemotherapeutic agents due to the presence of membrane associated proteins such as P-glycoprotein and Multidrug resistance-associated protein. Thus it is, imperative that new drug treatments are developed that have neither the toxicity nor mechanisms of resistance associated with conventional chemotherapy. In recent years, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have attracted attention as potential anti-cancer drugs due to reports that they can selectively target and kill cancer cells while leaving normal healthy cells unaffected. This review summaries several studies and discusses whether AMPs could be a viable treatment option in the fight against lung cancer.