Design and Mechanism of Action of Genomic-Based Antifungals

Dear Colleagues,

The last fifty years have witnessed an increasing number of human diseases caused by pathogenic fungi, particularly in hospitalized patients and those with suppressed or dejected immune systems. This has converted fungal diseases into a serious threat to public health around the world. A major problem of fungal infections is that the amount of available antifungals is rather limited, particularly for the treatment of life-threatening invasive, serious mycosis. Some examples include traditional amphothericin B and its lipidic formulations, an efficient but toxic antifungal. Fortunately, less toxic and more potent drugs have been developed as primary alternative options for the treatment of fungal diseases. These include the semisynthetic echinocandins (caspafungin, micafungin, and anidulafungin) that function as inhibitors of b1-3 glucan synthetase, an essential enzyme involved in fungal cell wall biosynthesis, as well as the azoles (fluconazol, voriconazol, itraconazol, isavuconozol, and posaconazol) that block ergosterol synthesis and flucytosine, an inhibitor of cell replication.

Molecular biology offers a number of promising possibilities for the development of, ideally, more specific and potent antifungals. Knowledge of the 3D structures of genes, regulators of gene expression, transcripts, proteins, and, in general, all genome elements involved in fungal pathogenicity and virulence may serve to configure antagonic structures that may serve as antifungals for the treatment of common infections caused by pathogens such as Candida, Aspergillus, Cryptococcus, Hystoplasma, Blastomyces, Mucor, Sporothrix, and others.

This Special Issue deals with efforts and communications of molecular biology-based approaches to design antimycotic drugs to prevent and cure disseminated mycoses.

Prof. Dr. Everardo López-Romero
Prof. Dr. Mayra Cuéllar-Cruz
Guest Editors

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• fungal diseases
• life-threating mycoses
• traditional antimycotic drugs
• toxicity
• modified antifungals
• genomic-based design antifungals
• structure
• mechanism of action
• selectivity specificity
• efficiency