Fungal-Unique Pathways and Their Utilization for the Development of Novel Antifungals
A special issue of Journal of Fungi (ISSN 2309-608X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2018)
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Fungal infections are estimated to affect over a quarter of the world’s population. Life-threatening fungal infections are on the rise, resulting in at least 1.5 million deaths per year worldwide. Because fungi are eukaryotes, the development of new antifungals has been slow. Many antifungals have serious side effects and resistance is rapidly developing. Most new antifungals are simply a variation on an existing theme.
Papers in this Special Issue focus on the development of novel antifungals targeting biochemical pathways unique to fungi. Bioinformatic analyses and metabolic networking coupled with transcriptome data have reconstructed the major fungal metabolic pathways and identified numerous unique or highly conserved targets for antifungal drug development. A growing number of these targets has been validated by gene deletion and virulence analysis in model organisms. Several compounds inhibiting key metabolic processes have been described. Most excitingly, one compound F901318 that inhibits the fungal–specific enzyme dihydroorotate (DHODH/URA1) catalysing the fourth enzymatic step of pyrimidine biosynthesis, is currently in clinical trials, validating the promise of this approach.
I believe that systematic drug screening to identify and develop compounds inhibiting key fungal-unique metabolic enzymes, should now be seriously undertaken. Only a combined effort between academia and pharma will enable us to address the growing challenge of antifungal resistance and rising infection.
Prof. Nir Osherov
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Aspergillus fumigatus
- antifungals
- antifungal drugs
- fungal–specific enzyme
- fungal infections