New Antifungal Provides Hope in the Fight Against Superbugs (sciencedaily.com)

dryriver shares news about the ongoing war against drug-resistant fungus. ScienceDaily reports: Microscopic yeast have been wreaking havoc in hospitals around the world -- creeping into catheters, ventilator tubes, and IV lines -- and causing deadly invasive infection. C. auris is particularly problematic because it loves hospitals, has developed resistance to a wide range of antifungals, and once it infects a patient doctors have limited treatment options.

But in a recent Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy study, researchers confirmed a new drug compound kills drug-resistant C. auris, both in the laboratory and in a mouse model that mimics human infection. The drug works through a novel mechanism. Unlike other antifungals that poke holes in yeast cell membranes or inhibit sterol synthesis, the new drug blocks how necessary proteins attach to the yeast cell wall. This means C. auris yeast can't grow properly and have a harder time forming drug-resistant communities that are a stubborn source of hospital outbreaks... The drug is first in a new class of antifungals, which could help stave off drug resistance.

Comments

Safe anti-fungals are are hard to find.

[hey!]

For reasons you can see by looking at the tree of life entry for Eukaryotes: fungi it turns out are much more closely related to animals than plants are, and of course plants are vastly more closely related to animals than bacteria or viruses. That makes it hard to find antifungals that have a high therapeutic index: the ratio of the quantity needed to produce toxicity over the quantity needed for therapeutic effect.