A Novel Therapeutic for Drug-resistant Candida auris: An Oral Abstract Presentation

In this video, Mina Izadjoo, PhD presents research that is focused on novel and cost-effective antimicrobials, including antifungals, ranging from small molecules to recombinant proteins. The investigators discovered a novel Bacillus strain that, by genomic sequencing, was determined to be a new species. Data were presented at the 2023 Symposium on Advanced Wound Care Spring as a podium presentation.
 

Transcript:

My name is Mina Izadjoo. I'm President and Chief Science Officer of Integrated Pharma Services, which is a small biotechnology company in Rockville, Maryland.

Candida auris is a fungal pathogen, and it has been recognized recently as a public health care threat. The reason for that is that there are multidrug-resistant strains of these organisms that are being circulated in our health care settings, and the clinicians have limited options to treat this organism.

Infection control measures in clinical settings is critical. Since this invasive fungal pathogen can quickly spread from one patient to the other by simply contact and also the health care professionals, the clinicians can transfer this organism. Therefore, using appropriate disinfectant measures in the wound care clinics, in the hospitals, is very important, and also attention has to be made that these disinfectants are from the list of EPA-approved disinfectants that are actually known to be effective against this fungal pathogen.

My team has been focused on developing novel and effective therapeutics for drug-resistant pathogens. In addition to that, our focus is to come up with solutions that are cost-effective, that can readily become available to low-income individuals.

One of the approaches that we have taken is going to basically nature and try to see what is out there. We know there are bacteriophages. Bacteriophages don't work against fungal pathogens, so we continued our work and stay focused on isolating new bacteria.

We isolated a bacteria that when we conducted laboratory testing, found out that it is extremely effective against drug-resistant Candida auris, especially the strains that we have obtained from CDC. We realized that this organism is very different than other organisms that we have isolated. Therefore, we extracted DNA and did DNA sequencing. Found out that this organism is a new organism.

It is from the genus Bacillus; however, [it] is a new species. Therefore, we conducted additional testing and found out that it excretes antimicrobial, excretes novel lipoproteins, and by HPLC mass spec, we were able to determine that we have 3 new antifungals in that organism. So our approach for tackling drug-resistant Candida auris, it can be simply using this novel probiotics, or to continue with identification of the novel antimicrobials that the organism has and prepare it in a form of a gel, or some sort of a wash that can be used on the skin.