Abstract
Invasive fungal infections have significantly increased in the last few decades. Three classes of drugs are commonly used to treat these infections: polyenes, azoles and echinocandins. Unfortunately each of these drugs has drawbacks; polyenes are toxic, resistance against azoles is emerging and echinocandins have narrow spectrum of activity. Thus, the development of new antifungals is urgently needed. In this context, fungal sphingolipids have emerged as a potential target for new antifungals, because their biosynthesis in fungi is structurally different than in mammals. Besides, some fungal sphingolipids play an important role in the regulation of virulence in a variety of fungi. This review aims to highlight the diverse strategies that could be used to block the synthesis or/and function of fungal sphingolipids.
Acknowledgements
M Del Poeta is Burroughs Wellcome Investigator in Infectious Diseases. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
The authors thank Arielle Bryan and Luna Joffe for their contributions to the work.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
This work was supported by grants from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), by NIH grants AI56168, AI100631, AI116420 and by a Merit Review grant I01BX002624 from the Veterans Affairs Program in Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development to MDP. The authors have no other 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 apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.