Ongoing projects

As a consequence of the increasing number of fungal infections caused by antifungal drug-resistant Candida biofilms, there is an urgent need to develop new and effective biofilm inhibitory strategies against the most prevalent clinically important species, such as Candida albicans and Candida auris.

The Neosartorya fischeri antifungal protein 2 (NFAP2) is considered as a potential candidate for this purpose as it shows inhibitory and eradication activities on Candida biofilms. However, development of an NFAP2-based anti-biofilm drug is cost- and time-consuming.

Drug repurposing represents a time- and cost-effective straightforward strategy for identification of new applicability of existing drugs beyond the original medical indication. The present project focuses on these aspects, and aims to (1) investigate the biofilm inhibitory mechanism of NFAP2 in C. albicans and C. auris, (2) identify the direct and indirect molecular components of the Candida biofilm inhibitory activity of NFAP2 to find protein targets for a drug repurposing strategy, (3) identify NFAP2 binding pockets of the directly targeted proteins, and search for molecules with binding affinity to these pockets from approved drug, experimental drug and traditional Chinese medicine libraries, (4) investigate the potential, safe, and future-proof applicability of the most promising candidate molecule. These goals will be achieved by senior and young scientists, and supervised university students applying a multidisciplinary approach.

As a final outcome of the project, we will be able to make suggestions for a new and effective Candida biofilm eradication strategy for the medicine.


Supported by Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office.