£1.45m grant funds new drugs to fight deadly candida infections
The Medical Research Council has awarded £1.45m to develop new efflux-resistant antifungal drugs for Candida auris and other Candida species, pathogens with mortality rates over 50 per cent.
The grant will support research into invasive candidiasis, tackling rising drug resistance in fungi the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified as “critical”.
Professor Miraz Rahman at King’s College London will lead the project, working with the UK Health Security Agency and the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology.
Rahman is professor of medicinal chemistry at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London.
Rahman said: “Our goal is to use innovative drug discovery techniques to create impact at the bedside.
“By combining advanced chemistry with genetics and clinical insight, we aim to deliver efflux-resistant treatments that save lives and reduce the growing burden of fungal disease on the NHS and globally.”
Candida auris spreads in hospital intensive care units and poses a serious risk to patients with weakened immune systems, including those receiving chemotherapy.
With only a few antifungal drug classes available and resistance on the rise, the WHO recently issued its first Fungal Priority Pathogens List, ranking 19 pathogens as critical, high or medium priority.
The research team will use King’s Efflux Resistance Breaker (ERB) technology to boost azoles — a common antifungal class.
Fungi resist these drugs with efflux pumps, microscopic mechanisms that eject treatment molecules before they can act.
The researchers will also use gene-editing methods such as CRISPR to investigate key efflux pumps including Cdr1 and Mdr1, aiming to design drugs that can bypass or block resistance mechanisms.
Dr Barry Panaretou, co-applicant at King’s, will lead the genetic studies.
He said: “We will use CRISPR editing to switch off or tune the key pumps in Candida, then watch how the fungus adapts.
“This will tell us exactly which pumps matter in different clinical settings and how to design ERB compounds that remain effective in the real world”
