Immune & Antimicrobial
Defensins
Defensins are the killing chemistry inside human white blood cells, and the same peptides line the gut, skin and airway — the immune system's first response, working long before any antibody exists. In a low-salt buffer they are devastating: human beta-defensin 3 killed thirty multidrug-resistant hospital isolates in one to twenty minutes. Then the buffer is made to resemble a body and most of that disappears — ordinary salt blunts the killing, and 20% human serum abolished it against the Gram-negative strains entirely. Defensins are a family rather than a molecule, and results do not transfer between members: the one defensin given to septic mice, human neutrophil peptide 1, made them worse, 80% dying at the higher dose against 10% of controls.
Last updated
Mechanism
Cationic amphipathic structures permeabilise microbial membranes and also modulate chemotaxis and innate immune signalling.
Reported effects
What sources associate with this compound. Reported categories, not outcomes we have graded — each would need its own citation and rung.
- Antimicrobial research
- Innate immunity context
- Skin infection research
Dosing on file unverified
Brilacidin (defensin derivative): topical, Phase 2 completed
Carried from a source that labels it unverified, and reproduced with that label attached. A record of what is reported, not a recommendation. No citation on this page establishes it.
Literature on file 3
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review or editorial
Defensins: antimicrobial peptides of innate immunity (Nature Reviews Immunology 2003, cited 2448x) graded on: indexed as "Review" - secondary literature, not a study — “Review”
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in vitro
Defensins. Natural peptide antibiotics of human neutrophils (Journal of Clinical Investigation 1985, cited 1089x) graded on: an in-vitro system — read from the indexed abstract — “in vitro”
Not graded
1 citation whose study design could not be read from the title. Left ungraded rather than guessed at.
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not graded
NCT02052388: A Randomized, Double-Blind Study Comparing Three Dosing Regimens of Brilacidin to Daptomycin in the Treatment of Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infections (ABSSSI) graded on: NCT02052388 is completed and has posted no results - a registration, not a reported outcome — “NCT02052388”
Notes unverified prose
Brilacidin (PMX-30063) Phase 2 (NCT02052388); no native defensin therapeutic; zero human trials for native defensins
Not on file 9
8 of the 8 fields we track hold nothing on this record, and each says why. 1 further absence is named below. A blank field is a bug; a named absence is a finding.
- molecular weightnothing we hold supplies it
- molecular formulanothing we hold supplies it
- CAS registry numbernothing we hold supplies it
- PubChem identifiernothing we hold supplies it
- amino-acid sequencenothing we hold supplies it
- SMILES stringnothing we hold supplies it
- InChInothing we hold supplies it
- InChI keynothing we hold supplies it
- half-lifenothing we hold supplies it
Each field links to every other record missing the same thing. The full ledger holds 765 gaps across 163 records.