The potential role of peptides in cancer, infectious diseases, and autoimmunity: a narrative review

In the last two decades, peptidomics, which can be defined as the science of studying the biological relevance of peptides, has grown in relevance. Today, we can 1) define disease-associated–proteins in terms of short peptide modules, 2) precisely target cancer cells by hitting peptide sequences of tumour-associated antigens, and 3) inactivate harmful cross-reactive autoantibodies, among others; indeed, scientific progress has been made in epitope definition, and we can precisely identify the amino acid (aa) sites involved in immunological reactions and locate antigenicity and immunogenicity within minimal immune pentapeptide determinants. Clinically, peptides offer new approaches for fighting the spread and re-emergence of infectious pathogens and provide new strategies for safe therapies in cancer and autoimmune pathologies. Here, this paper carries out a historical review of the role of peptides in medicine in the last decades.