Acne, or acne vulgaris, which is also been called blackheads, blemishes, whiteheads, pimples or zits, is a skin problem commonly seen in adolescence. Acne affects mostly skin with the densest population of sebaceous follicles, such as the face, neck, upper part of the chest, and back. Its symptoms are various depend on how serious the acnes are, including harmless, noninflammmatory or inflammatory breakouts, or scarring skin lesions, and may last from days to months, or even entire life. Accordingly, treatments targeting specific forms of acnes could be from mild cleanser, benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, isotretinoin, retinoids, antibiotics to laser resurfacing or dermabrasion.

But, unfortunately, most of these resorts have side-effects. For example, oral isotretinoin may be the most effective therapy and used early in severe disease due to its anti-inflammatory ability, but it is not good for women of childbearing age because of the teratogenicity and other side-effects. And, although antibiotics treatments are effective and direct, the antibiotics resistance has already become a worldwide concern.

Based on these current situations, most recently, Dr. LAI Ren (Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS) and his research team have reported their newest discovery of a small peptide with therapeutic potential for inflammatory acne vulgaris, which has been named LZ1.

According to Dr. LAI’s study, this designed 15-amino-acid-residue peptide, LZ1, contained strong antimicrobial activity against bacteria pathogens of acne vulgaris including Propionibacterium acnes, Staphylococcus epidermidis and S. aureus. Especially, it exerted strong anti-P. acnes ability.

In their study, by using mouse ear models to evaluate the antimicrobial potential, it has showed that the minimal inhibitory concentration of LZ1 to against three strains of P. acnes was 4 times lower than that of clindamycin. Moreover, because of the simple primary structure with only 15 amino acid residues, it is easy to produce, ship and store. Furthermore, combines with its little hemolytic activity on blood red cells, little cytotoxicity on human keratinocytes, and high stability inhuman plasma, LZ1 might be an excellent therapeutic agent for the treatment of acne vulgaris.

The main findings of this study have been published on PLOS One (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0072923).