Fungaffine drugs: Exploring high-affinity peptides as anti-fungal agents
Our vision is to provide new selective antifungal leads for the pharmaceutical industry to address an unmet medical need.
Fungal pathogens significantly influence animals, plants, ecosystems, and human health causing extinctions of species, disturbances as well as a threat to food security. Fungal infections constitute a major health concern, and it is estimated that one billion people acquire such every year, with 1.7 million deadly outcomes despite the availability of antifungal drugs. Still, fungi remain underestimated as pathogens. All current antifungal drugs cause severe side effects and resistant strains have developed. Consequently, antifungal agents with high selectivity and that are less prone to development of resistance are urgently needed. Furthermore, the commercial potential of anti-fungal medicine is high. A broad-spectrum anti-fungal agent without side effects has the potential to outcompete current drugs and gain a significant market share.
We offer MSc and BSc projects. The main methods include yeast cloning and growth, protein expression and purification, high-throughput biochemical and biophysical assays, where the focus can be adjusted according to your interest.
Fig. 3 Identification of a fungal H+-ATPase inhibitor with an IC50 of ca. 1 µM. We employ high-throughput biochemical and biophysical assays to screen and develop cyclic peptide inhibitors.
Funded by: Independent Research Fund Denmark, fields of ‘Technology and Production Sciences (FTP)’
Period: 2023-2026
