Identifying Vulnerabilities in Fungal Pathogens Through Functional and Chemical Genomic Analysis [en anglais seulement]
[en anglais seulement]
Intrinsic and acquired drug resistance of microbial pathogens poses a grave threat to human health and has enormous economic consequences worldwide. Fungal pathogens present a particular challenge because they are eukaryotes and share many of the same biological processes as the human hosts they infect. The number of drug classes that have distinct targets in fungi is very limited and the usefulness of current antifungal drugs is compromised by dose-limiting host toxicity and the frequent emergence of high-grade resistance. New, non-cross-reactive drugs for the treatment of life-threatening fungal infections are urgently needed. This session will focus on our recent work to address this challenge, examining functional genomics, chemical biology and structure guided drug design. Novel compound classes with potent single agent antifungal activity will also be highlighted, in addition to those that have synergistic activity with current antifungal drugs to enable resistance-disfavoring combination regimens.