Molecules of the Month
December 2022
Crowd-Sourced Metal Complexes as Antifungals

There are currently fewer than 10 antifungal drugs in clinical development, but new fungal strains that are resistant to most current antifungals are spreading rapidly across the world.
We tested a library of over 1000 metal complexes and found them to be highly active against relevant fungal strains. Only 1/11 metal compounds showed signs of toxicity in the Galleria mellonella animal model and one platinum compound was effective at treating a fungal infection in vivo.

This work was carried out in the group of SNSF Ambizione Fellow Dr. Angelo Frei.

References:

  • A. Frei, A. G. Elliott, A. Kan, H. Dinh, S. Bräse, A. E. Bruce, M. R. Bruce, F. Chen, D. Humaidy, N. Jung, A. Paden King, P. G. Lye, H. K. Maliszewska, A. M. Mansour, D. Matiadis, M. Paz Muņoz, T.-Yu Pai, S. Pokhrel, P. J. Sadler, M. Sagnou, M. Taylor, J. J. Wilson, D. Woods, J. Zuegg, W. Meyer, A. K. Cain, M. A. Cooper, M. A. T. Blaskovich;
    "Metal Complexes as Antifungals? From a Crowd-Sourced Compound Library to the First In Vivo Experiments"
    JACS Au, 2022, 2(10), 2277-2294; doi:10.1021/jacsau.2c00308.