Each year, 25,000 people die in Europe as a result of antibiotic-resistant infections, costing the European Union >1.5 billion euros. A similar scenario takes place in the United States, where >2 million people are infected with drug-resistant bacteria leading to 23,000 deaths annually. In addition to the increase in bacterial resistance to available antibiotics, no antimicrobials designed to combat these recalcitrant infections have been approved for use in humans.

However, in recent years increasing effort has been devoted to identifying strategies against persistent infections. One such approach is the use of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as templates to generate synthetic peptide variants with improved activity. AMPs are evolutionarily conserved.