Emerging Insights into the Biological Activities of an Alpha-Fetoprotein Derived Peptide and its Sub-fragments: Relevance of the Peptide Fragments to Cancer Therapies: A Review and Commentary
Gerald J Mizejewski.
The antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) constitute a unique gene/protein family comprised of peptides involved in the first line innate immune defense in the body of mammals and lower animals. The first line of the immune defense function is to protect against a group of microorganisms which encompass bacteria, fungi, and parasites. The main subject of this review focuses on a particular AMP-like 34-mer peptide segment derived from a pregnancy protein termed alpha-fetoprotein (AFP). The AFP-derived peptide is a 34 amino acid fragment derived from full-length AFP that displays growth inhibitory properties in the malignant progressive growths of human and animal tumors. However, in recent years, it was discovered that AMP-like peptides could be utilized as anti-cancer agents with the ability to home onto malignant tumors and penetrate into their cell surface bilayer membranes. Further research into this fetal AFP-derived peptide segment revealed that the 34-mer segment could be further parsed into three sub fragments, in which each of the three fragments was found to possess biological activities of their own. Moreover, the three individual sub-fragments were found to contribute to the overall biological activity of the entire 34-mer peptide fragment. Hence, the present treatise reviews the roperties, traits, and activities of the overall 34-mer peptide and each of its three individual peptide sub-fragments.
