Description:
Synergistic anti-fungal combinations
Effective at substantially reduced concentrations
In Brief:
Combinations of agents that stimulate mistranslation in certain fungi
Optimised combinations have been identified by screening
Combinations of FDA-approved agents are among the highest-performing
Background: Fungicides are a significant market within agriculture, with crop yields and animal health affected by the growth of undesirable and/or pathogenic fungi.
Resistance to fungicides is increasing, but the amount of fungicide that can be administered is often limited by cost, regulation, toxicity to desired organisms (e.g. crops), or a combination of the three.
Solution: University of Nottingham researchers have shown that the mistranslation rate in certain fungi can be increased up to 10X by combining particular transport inhibitors and aminoglycoside antibiotics (i.e. synergistic effect), resulting in apoptosis.
Certain combinations have achieved a 100% reduction in fungal growth at concentrations which, individually, had negligible effect.
This synergy is not observed in bacterial, plant, or mammalian cells, suggesting that toxicity to plants, humans and non-fungal microbiota can be reduced by virtue of the lower concentrations used.
Optimal combinations identified
The Nottingham team has screened 172 novel combinations against 3 major crop pathogens ( R. solani, Z. tritici and B. cinerea ), as well as 3 human pathogens.
48 combinations were found to have strong synergistic effect and, of these, 23 were effective against more than one pathogen. A number of the combinations identified as synergistic consist of FDA-approved agents (e.g. quinine and bicarbonate, below)
