Current advances in antifungal targets and drug development.
Current advances in antifungal targets and drug development.
复制标题
抗真菌靶点和药物开发的最新进展。
作者：
S. Sundriyal;Rohit Sharma;R. Jain
真菌是最被忽视的病原体之一，这一点从1956年发现的两性霉素B（一种多烯抗生素）仍然被用作抗真菌治疗的“金标准”这一事实中显而易见。在过去的二十年里，威胁生命的全身性真菌感染的发病率急剧上升。这可归因于艾滋病毒感染人口增加、癌症化疗和滥用抗生素导致免疫功能低下患者人数增加。大多数临床使用的抗真菌药物在毒性、功效和成本方面存在各种缺点，并且它们的频繁使用导致了耐药菌株的出现。因此，对属于广泛结构类别的新型抗真菌药物存在巨大需求，其选择性地作用于新靶点且副作用较少。本文综述了近年来抗真菌药物的新靶点及其作用分子的研究进展。
Fungi are one of the most neglected pathogens apparent from the fact that the Amphotericin B, a polyene antibiotic, discovered way back in 1956 is still used as a "gold standard" for antifungal therapy. Past two decades have witnessed a dramatic rise in the incidences of life threatening systemic fungal infections. This can be ascribed to the increase in the number of immuno-compromised patients due to rise in HIV infected population, cancer chemotherapy and indiscriminate use of antibiotics. Majority of clinically used antifungals suffer from various drawbacks in terms of toxicity, efficacy and cost, and their frequent use has led to the emergence of resistant strains. Hence, there is a great demand for novel antifungals belonging to wide range of structural classes, selectively acting on novel targets with fewer side effects. This article aims at reviewing recent efforts made towards discovering novel antifungal drug targets and investigational molecules acting on them.