Table 1.

Different features of antibiotics, antibodies, and antimicrobial peptides as anti-infective agents for infectious diseases.

Feature	Antibiotics	AMP	Antibodies
Cost of production	Low	High	High/moderate
Storage conditions	Room temperature	Refrigerated	Refrigerated
Administration	Orally (tablets)	Topical/systemically	iv/sc injection
Target specificity	Narrow	Broad/narrow	Narrow
Resistance	Yes	Difficult	No
Structure	Simple, homogeneous,well-characterized	Diverse, homogeneous, well-characterized	Complex, heterogeneous, and less characterized
Molecular weight	Low (<1kDa)	<5 kDa	High (>50 kDa)
Degree of instability	Low	High	Low
Risk of immunogenicity	Low	Low	High
Mechanisms of action	Generally specific	Variable or still unknown	Specific