TY - JOUR
T1 - The use of mannan antigen and anti-mannan antibodies in the diagnosis of invasive candidiasis: recommendations from the Third European Conference on Infections in Leukemia
AU - Mikulska, Małgorzata
AU - Mikulska, Malgorzata Karolina
AU - Calandra, Thierry
AU - Sanguinetti, Maurizio
AU - Poulain, Daniel
AU - Viscoli, Claudio
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Many drugs are available for the treatment of systemic or superficial mycoses, but only a limited number of them are effective antifungal drugs, devoid of toxic and undesirable side effects. Furthermore, resistance development and fungistatic rather than fungicidal activities represent limitations of current antifungal therapy. Therefore there remains an urgent need for a new generation of antifungal agents. According to a polypharmacological approach, the present work concerns the synthesis and antifungal activity of a set of peptides designed to simultaneously target the fungal cell surface and lanosterol demethylase, a key enzyme involved in ergosterol synthesis. Our peptides include amino acid sequences characteristic of membrane-active antimicrobial peptides (AMP), and due to the presence of His residues, they carry the imidazole ring characteristic of azole compounds. The peptides synthesized by us, were tested against different yeast species, and displayed general antifungal activity, with a therapeutically promising antifungal specificity against Cryptococcus neoformans.
AB - Many drugs are available for the treatment of systemic or superficial mycoses, but only a limited number of them are effective antifungal drugs, devoid of toxic and undesirable side effects. Furthermore, resistance development and fungistatic rather than fungicidal activities represent limitations of current antifungal therapy. Therefore there remains an urgent need for a new generation of antifungal agents. According to a polypharmacological approach, the present work concerns the synthesis and antifungal activity of a set of peptides designed to simultaneously target the fungal cell surface and lanosterol demethylase, a key enzyme involved in ergosterol synthesis. Our peptides include amino acid sequences characteristic of membrane-active antimicrobial peptides (AMP), and due to the presence of His residues, they carry the imidazole ring characteristic of azole compounds. The peptides synthesized by us, were tested against different yeast species, and displayed general antifungal activity, with a therapeutically promising antifungal specificity against Cryptococcus neoformans.
KW - mannan
KW - mannan
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/1611
U2 - 10.1186/cc9365
DO - 10.1186/cc9365
M3 - Article
SN - 0270-7462
VL - 14
SP - R222-R222
JO - CRITICAL CARE
JF - CRITICAL CARE
ER -