Antimicrobial Peptides: A Roadmap for Accelerating Discovery and Development

Antimicrobial Peptides: A Roadmap for Accelerating Discovery and Development covers the most important efforts of scientists and engineers worldwide to accelerate the process of discovery, production, and eventual market penetration of more potent antimicrobial peptides. These efforts have been fueled by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and data science, molecular and CFD simulations, easy-to-use process simulation packages, microfluidics, 3D-printing, among many others. Such technologies can now be implemented and scaled up quickly and at relatively low cost in low-budget production facilities, critical to moving to sustainable and marketable products worldwide.

Discovering novel antimicrobial peptides rationally and cost-effectively has emerged as one of the significant challenges of modern biotechnology. Thus far, this process has been tedious and costly, resulting in molecules with activities far below those needed to address the current challenge of microbial resistance to antibiotics that takes the lives of thousands of people around the world every year. Finally, the book also highlights how multidisciplinary teams have assembled to address the challenges of manufacturing, biological testing, and clinical trials to finally reach complete translation.

• Covers computational tools (including emerging artificial intelligence algorithms) and microfluidic systems for discovery and high-throughput screening of AMPs
• Discusses the application of bioprocess engineering scale-up approaches for AMPs' production and purification with the aid of process simulation tools and rapid prototyping
• Highlights user-centered design and formulation of products with AMPs
• Describes the whole pipeline for AMPs production

Luis H. Reyes is an Associate Professor at Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and Director of the Product and Process Design Group. Luis is a chemical engineer (Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia) with a PhD. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University (College Station, TX, USA). His research interest focuses on applying biological engineering to design and develop bioprocesses and bioproducts using various tools borrowed from the natural sciences, such as molecular and synthetic biology, reverse engineering of microorganisms, laboratory adaptive evolution, and microbiology. He teams with an interdisciplinary research group in the biomedical engineering area to develop bionanoconjugated vehicles to transport and deliver biological molecules with therapeutic potential, including gene and enzyme replacement therapies. He also works in the discovery and production of peptides with applications in the medical, food, and petrochemical industries. In food engineering, Luis studies the sensory design of beer and the protein replacement of dairy products.

Juan Carlos Cruz obtained his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the National University of Colombia (2002) and later his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Kansas State University (KSU) (2010) for his work on a new platform for enzyme immobilization to address biocatalysis challenges in non-aqueous media. Cruz has experience as Head of New Product Development in a chemical company, where he developed several nanotechnological applications to improve critical attributes of plastics according to the requirements and standards of new market niches. In 2016, he joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia). Cruz has more than fifteen years of working in the fields of industrial and medical biotechnology and, in particular, in the development of nanobiocatalysts, the fundamental understanding of protein-protein, protein-surface, and protein-lipid interactions, the development of new nanoparticulate vehicles for the release and guidance of pharmacological molecules and the search for unique peptides with membrane activity.

Gregory R. Wiedman works at Seton Hall University in NJ, USA.