Peptide basics
1,380 papers and 44 people: the antimicrobial peptide gap
On this page
LL-37 is a human antimicrobial peptide and a heavily researched one: 1,380 indexed publications over ten years.
Its registered human trial record is five studies with 44 participants between them.
KPV, the other antimicrobial peptide tracked here, has one indexed publication and no registered trial.
That gap — a large laboratory literature and almost no human testing — is characteristic of the whole antimicrobial peptide field.
This page reports the public evidence record for antimicrobial peptides tracked here. It makes no claim about what they do and contains no dose, schedule or route.
A large literature and a tiny trial record
LL-37 has 1,380 indexed publications in our ten-year window — the eighth-largest literature on this site, and the largest belonging to a compound with almost no human trial record. Its registered human record is 5 trials with 44 participants in total.12
That works out at roughly 31 published papers for every person who has received it in a registered trial. No other compound tracked here comes close to that ratio.12
Why the field is hard to translate
Antimicrobial peptides are part of the innate immune system and are studied intensively because resistance to conventional antibiotics makes new mechanisms valuable. Interest is not the constraint.1
The constraints are practical. These molecules are typically large, unstable in the body, and active against human cells as well as microbes at higher concentrations. Turning laboratory activity into something that can be given to a person is where most programmes stop.1
KPV, and a naming problem worth recording
KPV has no registered trial and one indexed publication. It also has no readership figure on this site, and the reason is instructive: an earlier version of our collection matched KPV to the Wikipedia article on a Soviet heavy machine gun, and published its traffic as the compound's readership.3
Three-letter names collide with everything. That failure is why a subject-match check now runs on every article before its traffic is attributed to a compound, and why KPV's readership is recorded as unavailable rather than guessed.3
Common questions
Are antimicrobial peptides antibiotics?
They act against microbes but work differently from conventional antibiotics. None of the ones tracked here is an approved antimicrobial medicine.
Does the large literature mean LL-37 works?
It means it has been studied extensively in laboratory systems. Translation rates from that setting into successful human trials are low across all of medicine.
Why does KPV have no readership figure?
Because we could not confidently match it to a Wikipedia article about the compound. A missing figure is deliberate — the alternative was publishing traffic for an article about a weapon.
Sources
- RegulatoryPubMed search — LL-37U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2026pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22LL-37%22 ↗↩ Back to text
- RegulatoryClinicalTrials.gov search — intervention: LL-37U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2026clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=LL-37 ↗↩ Back to text
- RegulatoryClinicalTrials.gov search — intervention: KPVU.S. National Library of Medicine, 2026clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=KPV ↗↩ Back to text