Antimicrobial Peptides: A Recent Update in the Pros, Cons, and Opportunities as Potential Antimicrobial Agents from Marine Resources

The emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) among pathogenic organism puts human and animal lives at stake. As a result of that, researchers in the scientific community tirelessly made efforts to search for novel antimicrobial agents to combat the pathogenesis of multidrug-resistant pathogens. Marine environment represents a vast diversity of lives that interact with each other and thus have to protect themselves against infectious pathogens. Hence, they present an armamentarium of diversified biomolecules with different mechanisms of action, which aids the survival of the host in the very same environment. Among the natural biomolecules, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) gain more attention owing to their potential action as antimicrobial agents against several infectious diseases. With the emergence of MDR pathogens, AMPs are currently deemed to be the next generation of antibiotics. The quest of these AMPs was initially focused on the terrestrial environment for years. By knowing the presence of the least explored and diverse organism, the focus on the quest of AMPs is now heading toward the marine ecosystem. The current chapter focuses on the benefits, confronts and chances of using AMPs against MDR pathogens, and also emphasizes the need and importance of designing a focused development tactic to support the advancement and potential application of AMPs in medicine.