<p>Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are essential components of the innate immune system in living organisms. They not only have significant impacts on inhibiting microbial growth, but show multiple properties while exhibiting therapeutic potentials. Over the past years, a wide diversity of AMPs has been identified from different natural sources like plants, animals and microorganisms. Recently mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been shown to exhibit strong antimicrobial effects both in vitro as well as in vivo possibly by expressing different families of AMPs depending upon source of cells. It has been revealed that species variations as well as tissue specific localization are responsible for the variation in expressions of AMPs families. In recent years new synthetic peptides are given importance in biomedical sciences. Herein we aim to review the current state of knowledge on identification of AMPs from various types of adult stem cells and tissues in animals including species variations in cell sources and culture conditions. Further, a glimpse of chemical nature and mode of actions of AMPs in general have also been described. In the last part we have also tried to summarize the opportunities and challenges to the development of these peptides in clinical trials for prospective applications.</p>