Antimicrobial Peptides Pom-1 and Pom-2 from Pomacea poeyana Are Active against Candida auris , C. parapsilosis and C. albicans Biofilms

Recently two peptides isolated from the Cuban freshwater snail (Pilsbry, 1927) were described to have antimicrobial activity against bacterial pathogens. Here we show considerable activities of Pom-1 and Pom-2 to reduce the viability of , and the less common species measured as the decrease of metabolic activity in the resazurin reduction assay for planktonic cells. Although these activities were low, Pom-1 and Pom-2 turned out to be highly potent inhibitors of biofilm formation for the three species tested. Whereas Pom-1 was slightly more active against and as representatives of the more common species Pom-2 showed no preference and was fully active also against biofilms of the more uncommon species . Pom-1 and Pom-2 may represent promising lead structures for the development of a classical peptide optimization strategy with the realistic aim to further increase antibiofilm properties and other pharmacologic parameters and to generate finally the first antifungal drug with a pronounced dedication against biofilms.