Pharmacological Insights into Antimicrobial Plant Peptides and Global Trends in Encapsulation and Drug Delivery Research from 2000 to 2024

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) constitutes an increasingly pressing clinical obstacle that propels the quest for next-generation therapeutic interventions combining improved efficacy and reduced toxicity. Plant-derived antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) stand out for their inherently wide-spectrum activity; however, the clinical utility of these molecules is constrained by rapid proteolytic cleavage, physical instability, and the risk of undesirable systemic effects. Variants of encapsulation technology, including inorganic–organic hybrid nanoparticles, lipid-based vesicles, and macromolecular hydrogels, confer substantial pharmacological advantages by markedly enhancing peptide stability, extending systemic half-life, enabling sustained or triggered release, and minimising off-target toxicity. To discern the evolution of these technology-AMP conjugates and the remaining investigative lacunae, we executed a comprehensive bibliometric survey of works published between 2000 and 2024 as recorded by Scopus. A review of 249 documents confirms an annual publication growth rate of 11.45%, with the United States and China emerging as the leading contributors to primary research and the most active partners in international collaborations. Co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling analyses disclose a progressive redirection of scholarly emphasis from de novo peptide chemistry to the physics and engineering of advanced delivery, while hydrogels consistently occupy the core of highly cited clusters. Supplementing the scientometric narrative, the present investigation articulates pharmacological consequences of encapsulation, especially in (a) augmenting the effective bioavailable dose, (b) co-opting or entirely circumventing peptide-crosslinked resistance routes and (c) matching pharmacodynamics to pathophysiological zones requiring clinical counteraction. Collection of insights delivers a unifying scaffold of contemporaneous international activity and its translational usefulness, collectively serving as an agenda to chart forthcoming pharmacological engineering and clinical translations of peptide-based interventions aimed at multiple resistant-pathogen lineages.