Using FUNgal cell wall compounds TO FIGHT infectious fungi (FUN2FIGHT)

Research Project, 2024 – 2027

In the past decades, fungal diseases have caused an estimated 2 million deaths annually and over one billion people suffer from severe fungal diseases. Moreover, the worsening of global warming opens a Pandora’s box for fungal diseases. Some thermally intolerant fungi with current pathogenic potential can be expected to acquire the ability to survive at mammalian temperatures. The timely detection of fungal infections remains challenging, and there is a need for the development of faster diagnostic assay methods and immune treatments.Worldwide, mycoses caused by Candida spp, are major causes of morbidity and mortality, and are the main causative agents in systemic fungal infections. Among the Candida species, Candida albicans is the most common to cause infections in humans. In the project this spp and C. auris, a multidrug resistant fungus that represents an emerging threat to public health, will be used for the production and characterization of specific fungal-based molecules from the cell wall of these pathogens that can be tested for the immune response in human macrophages. Moreover, the cell wall collected at different stages of growth could serve to correlate difference in the carbohydrate profiles of the cell wall. The oligomers preserving their natural structures will be used as immunomodulatory agents to challenge macrophages and expect to correlate the molecular structure of the oligomers based on a glycomic approach to their immune response on human cells.