English

Abstract

Prescribing fluconazole for prophylaxis and treatment of Candida albicans infections in cancer patients is a common practice. The rational of using anti- Candida drugs along with cancer drugs is debating, because of contradictory results showing either increase or decrease in antifungal sensitivity. In an effort to analyse this, effect of short term exposure to thirty anticancer agents on minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of fluconazole was studied in a micro plate based assay. Antitumor antibiotic, 5- flurouracil was the most effective sensitizer of C. albicans, causing sixty-four fold increase in fluconazole susceptibility. Eight of the selected anticancer molecules had potential to lower fluconazole MIC by sixteen fold, so that it comes down to 0.062 µg/ml. Three of the cancer drugs caused eight fold increase in the antifungal sensitivity. Effective molecules belonged to six different classes, indicating that ability to sensitize C. albicans towards fluconazole was not confined to a specific group. Our in vitro study, for the first time reveals efficacy of the thirty anticancer drugs to act as sensitizers in C. albicans.   Key words: Antifungal, anticancer, Candida albicans, drug resistance, exposure, sensitization, drug susceptibility, fluconazole.