Candidiasis and the impact of flow cytometry on antifungal drug discovery

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Invasive candidiasis continues to be associated with significant morbidity and mortality as well as substantial health care costs nationally and globally. One of the contributing factors is the development of resistance to antifungal agents that are already in clinical use. Moreover, there are known treatment limitations with all of the available antifungal agents. Since traditional techniques in novel drug discovery are time consuming, high-throughput screening using flow cytometry presents as a potential tool to identify new antifungal agents that would be useful in the management of these patients.

Areas covered: In this review, the authors discuss the use of automated high-throughput screening assays based upon flow cytometry to identify potential antifungals from a library comprised of a large number of bioactive compounds. They also review studies that employed the use of this research methodology that has identified compounds with antifungal activity.

Expert opinion: High-throughput screening using flow cytometry has substantially decreased the processing time necessary for screening thousands of compounds, and has helped enhance our understanding of fungal pathogenesis. Indeed, the authors see this technology as a powerful tool to help scientists identify new antifungal agents that can be added to the clinician’s arsenal in their fight against invasive candidiasis.

KEYWORDS:

• Antifungal
• biofilm
• Candida
• drug discover
• drug repurposing
• flow cytometry

Article highlights

• Invasive candidiasis is a major global health care issue with profound morbidity and mortality.

• Candida species employ several different mechanisms of resistance to currently available antifungal drugs.

• There is increased incidence of resistance to antifungal drugs found in Candida species, especially C. glabrata and C. auris.

• There is great interest in discovering new compounds with different targets that can potentially be developed as novel antifungal treatment options.

• Cell-based assays with flow cytometry and high-throughput multiplexing can provide rapid screening of large numbers of compounds for antifungal activity.

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.

Declaration of Interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript has not been funded.