Abstract
There is an urgent need to develop novel antimicrobial substances. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are considered as promising candidates for future therapeutic use. Because of the re-emergence of the Flavivirus infection, and particularly the yellow fever virus (YFV), we have compared the antiviral activities from skin secretions of seven different frog species against YFV (strain 17D). Secretions from Sphaenorhynchus lacteus, Cryptobatrachus boulongeri and Leptodactylus fuscus displayed the more powerful activities. S. lacteus was found to inhibit viral lysis of Vero E6 cells even at the highest viral concentration evaluated of 10 LD50. We also report the identification of a novel frenatin-related peptide from S. lacteus and found that this peptide—on its own—can lead to 35% protection against YVF, while displaying no cytotoxicity against somatic cells even at fivefold higher concentrations. These results are attractive and support the need for continued exploration of new sources of AMPs from frog skin secretions such as those described here in the development of new compounds for the treatment of infectious diseases in general and specific viral infections in particular.
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded by COLCIENCIAS CODE 1204-343, by Comité de Investigaciones y Postgrados, Facultad de Ciencias from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, Fundación Bolivar Davivienda, Labbrands and by a special grant from the Hebrew University to E.M. We thank Dr Jhon Lynch, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Dr Andrew Crawford and Dr Adolfo Amézquita, Universidad de los Andes for they kind help in the identification of the species collected Jairo Mendez, Instituto Nacional de Salud for his advice with the antiviral assays.
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Muñoz-Camargo, C., Méndez, M., Salazar, V. et al. Frog skin cultures secrete anti-yellow fever compounds. J Antibiot 69, 783–790 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ja.2016.16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ja.2016.16
