How do you fight a fungal infection that is becoming increasingly resistant to medicine? By starving it, found a team of University at Buffalo and Temple University researchers. To treat Candida albicans, a common yeast that can cause illness in those with weakened immune systems, researchers limited the fungus' access to iron, an element crucial to the organism's survival.
They did so by using deferasirox, a medication used to treat blood disorders. Tested in mice, the results were promising: investigators decreased iron levels in saliva by four times, which altered the expression of more than 100 genes by the fungus, diminished its ability to infect oral mucosal tissue and caused a two-fold reduction in the organism's survival rate. "In the absence of novel drug candidates, drug repurposing aimed at using existing drugs to treat diseases is a promising strategy," says Mira Edgerton,…
