When scientists realize that these new polymers can kill some of the world’s deadliest fungi, they invite her to help unravel a mystery thousands of years in the making. By working together, scientists of apparently disparate backgrounds have found a bountiful new therapy that has the potential to dramatically change the way we fight drug-resistant infections with Candida.
Tackling a Global Health Challenge
Invasive fungal infections, predominantly by Candida species, have become an increasing global health threat affecting more than 2 million patients per year and being associated with relevant mortality rates. However, drug resistance has doubled and the pace of development of new therapies remains woefully slow.
This all changed when a twist of fate saw an inter-disciplinary research team from Germany and Australia form, led by Dr Sascha Brunke from the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology. The collaboration was inspired by a PhD student in chemistry named Sebastian Schäfer, who found himself stranded at home in Germany when the Australian Government closed its borders as part of its response to COVID-19.
Rather than allowing it to knock him off course, Schäfer took the opportunity to have a temporary move of his work on developing antifungal polymers to Jena at the Leibniz-HKI. These efforts not only gave rise the some different approaches and types research that may not have been conceived, but also a great collaboration between natural product researchers from both countries with infectious disease biologists.
A Breakthrough in Antifungal Therapy
This involved a series of synthetic polymers from the polyacrylamide family that they designed and synthesized, which showed impressive performance against Candida albicans, even resistant strains — forming a new team with researcher Raghav Vij. In tests with infected moth larvae in the lab, LH plus the drug caspofungin rendered such a good combination against the fungus that survival nearly doubled compared to moths or other treatments administered alone.
They also for the first time revealed how these synthetic polymers works. They discovered that the compounds target fungal cells in ways that are completely different from traditional antifungal agents, using novel mechanisms of action defaultdict.
The polymers, in general, stress the fungal cells and weaken them due to inhibition of a vital cell wall process (glycosylation at the surface of the cell), which leads to weakening of both cell walls and membranes and ultimately death of the entire biological unit. Furthermore, the team discovered that the polymers helped an immune response to fish for fungal cells as well.
There was also an exciting breakthrough where the laboratory generated C. albicans did not become resistant to other antifungal agents when combined with the LH polymer. These results indicate that these type of combination therapies are not only more powerful but also longer lasting than those comprised of previous treatments, possibly resulting in an overall better result for patients.
Conclusion
Synthetic polymers — Bacteria-fighting plastics for global health New research from a Brazilian-British collaboration describing the development and testing of molecular protein inhibitors, polymeric sponge lift supports or engineered industrial catalysts will make a major contribution to tackling fungal infections worldwide, especially in low-income countries where current therapies are out of reach socioeconomically. These early results still need extensive followup, testing, and optimization — but the hunt has begun for compounds that may someday change how we approach lethal Candida infections across an ever-growing drug-resistance spectrum.
