Plectasin is an antibiotic protein from the mushroom '' Pseudoplectania nigrella''. It was initially discovered in 2005 and commercialised by

Novozymes Novozymes A/S is a global biotechnology company headquartered in Bagsværd outside of Copenhagen, Denmark. The company's focus is the research, development and production of industrial enzymes, microorganisms, and biopharmaceutical ingredients. ...

. Plectasin belongs to the

antimicrobial An antimicrobial is an agent that kills microorganisms or stops their growth. Antimicrobial medicines can be grouped according to the microorganisms they act primarily against. For example, antibiotics are used against bacteria, and antifungals ar ...

peptide Peptides (, ) are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Long chains of amino acids are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty amino acids are called oligopeptides, and include dipeptides, tripeptides, and tetrapeptides. ...

class called fungal defensins, which is also present in

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordat ...

such as flies and mussels.

Clinical trials

Pre-clinical tests in mice have shown promising results in that multiresistant

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...

have problems mutating resistance against plectasin, which acts by directly binding the bacterial cell-wall precursor Lipid II. At the end of 2008, Novozymes signed a global licensing agreement with

Sanofi-Aventis Sanofi S.A. is a French multinational pharmaceutical and healthcare company headquartered in Paris, France. Originally, the corporation was established in 1973 and merged with Synthélabo in 1999 to form Sanofi-Synthélabo. In 2004, Sanofi-Syn ...

for the further development and marketing of NZ2114, a derivative of plectasin, as a treatment for

gram-positive In bacteriology, gram-positive bacteria are bacteria that give a positive result in the Gram stain test, which is traditionally used to quickly classify bacteria into two broad categories according to their type of cell wall. Gram-positive bact ...

bacterial infections, e.g.

Streptococcus ''Streptococcus'' is a genus of gram-positive ' (plural ) or spherical bacteria that belongs to the family Streptococcaceae, within the order Lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria), in the phylum Bacillota. Cell division in streptococci occurs ...

and Staphylococcus which are resistant to all existing antibiotics.

References

Antibiotics Peptides Defensins {{antibiotic-stub