Using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats for Recombinant Biosynthesis of Antimicrobial Peptides as Anti-COVID-19 Agents

Sherif Elnagdy; Maha AlKhazindar

doi:10.1021/acsptsci.1c00252

Using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats for Recombinant Biosynthesis of Antimicrobial Peptides as Anti-COVID-19 Agents

ACS Pharmacol Transl Sci. 2022 Feb 10;5(3):177-178. doi: 10.1021/acsptsci.1c00252. eCollection 2022 Mar 11.

Authors

Sherif Elnagdy¹, Maha AlKhazindar¹

Affiliation

¹ Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Giza, 12613, Egypt.

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused the death of 5.5 million people and the infection of more than 323 million people as of January 2022. The remarkable increase in pathogenicity and virulence might have occurred as a result of viral RNA mutations. To date, few antiviral drugs have been authorized for emergency use, but not yet approved, to treat mild to moderate COVID-19, with serious drawbacks and side effects. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) play an important role in the host's innate and adaptive immune system against a wide range of microbial infections. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is thought to be used to increase the recombinant biosynthesis of AMPs. There have been studies that reported the production of AMPs using CRISPR. Therefore, CRISPR is expected to play an important role in the production of AMPs as next-generation, safe, affordable, and efficient antiviral drugs in general and for the treatment of COVID-19 in particular, in addition to AMPs being efficient immunomodulators.