Geotrichum candidum--an opportunistic agent of mycotic diseases

[Disseminated fungal infection due to Magnusiomyces capitatus in a liver graft patient]

Disseminated fungal infections due to Magnusiomyces capitatus are rare, occurring exclusively in immunocompromised patients. We report the first case in a liver transplant patient with chronic rejection and portal thrombosis who had a M. capitatus fungemia with a refractory septic shock. Despite an antibacterial and antifungal treatment with caspofungin empirical treatment, the patient died from multiple organ failure. Subsequently, mycological examinations of blood cultures, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and urine were positive to M. capitatus identified by mass spectrometry and confirmed by sequencing respectively. The stain was resistant to caspofungin and fluconazole. The best treatment appears to be the combination of amphotericin B and voriconazole or amphotericin B and 5 fluorocytosine.

Target-specific anti-fungal discovery by targeting Geotrichum candidum histidinol dehydrogenase: a hybrid approach

This study describes a hybrid approach of screening substrate analogue inhibitors of histidinol dehydrogenase. Imidazole derivative library of approximately 400 compounds classified using Hierarchical cluster analysis, representative compounds of each class were tested in enzymatic assay and used for the development of quantitative structure-activity relationship models. Rest of the compounds in the library were screened using developed models and compounds predicted active were retested. 60% of the predicted compounds showed enzyme inhibition activity with IC(50) values ranged between 5.2 and 58.0 microm range and have fungistatic activity.