(From left) Ehab Salama and Yehia Elgammal work in Mohamed Seleem’s lab at the Center for One Health Research. Credit: Andrew Mann for Virginia Tech
Key points:
- Antiviral drugs can make antifungals work again, say sentients at Virginia Tech.
- Researchers have shown an HIV protease inhibitor drug can block the spread of Candida auris.
- Repurposing drugs already on the market for new uses can allow those treatments to reach widespread clinical use much more rapidly than a new drug, something desperately needed in the case of Candida auris, which has a 60 percent mortality rate.
Scientists at Virginia Tech have discovered that antiviral drugs can make antifungals work again. In their newest research, they demonstrate the potential of atazanavir, an HIV protease inhibitor drug, as a new avenue to improving the effectiveness of existing antifungals for those with a Candida auris infection.
Candida auris, first discovered in Japan as an ear infection, has a 60 percent mortality rate among those it infects, primarily people with compromised health in hospitals and nursing homes. There are only three classes of antifungal drugs—and Candida auris is resistant to all three.
In a new study published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Mohamed Seleem, at the Center for One Health Research at Virginia Tech, and his colleagues showed that the HIV drug atazanavir can block the ability of Candida auris to excrete antifungals through its efflux pumps.
“Think of a boat taking on water and hoses siphoning that water out of the boat to keep it afloat. atazanavir stops up the hoses,” explain the researchers.
This allows the azole class of antifungal drugs to not be expelled as easily and perform better against Candida auris.
The current research on atazanavir builds on work three years ago by Seleem’s lab, then at Purdue University, finding potentially similar benefit in lopinavir, another HIV protease inhibitor.
Repurposing drugs already on the market for new uses can allow those treatments to reach widespread clinical use much more rapidly than would happen with the discovery of an entirely new drug, as existing drugs have already been tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration and have years of further observation of effects in prescriptive use.
In 2022, the Center for One Health Research received a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for the Seleem lab’s research on repurposing already approved drugs for treating gonorrhea.