Recent advances on Candida albicans biology and virulence.

Adnane Sellam,Malcolm Whiteway

doi:10.12688/f1000research.9617.1

Abstract

Candida albicans is an important human fungal pathogen, in terms of both its clinical significance and its use as an experimental model for scientific investigation. Although this opportunistic pathogen is a natural component of the human flora, it can cause life-threatening infections in immunosuppressed patients. There are currently a limited number of antifungal molecules and drug targets, and increasing resistance to the front-line therapeutics, demonstrating a clear need for new antifungal drugs. Understanding the biology of this pathogen is an important prerequisite for identifying new drug targets for antifungal therapeutics. In this review, we highlight some recent developments that help us to understand how virulence traits are regulated at the molecular level, in addition to technical advances that improve the ability of genome editing in C. albicans.

Highlights

In particular Candida albicans, represent a major component of the disease burden caused by fungi and are the fourth most common cause of nosocomial infections in North American hospitals[5]
This has led to increasing interest in the biology of C. albicans and a continuing improvement in the tools involved in studying this opportunistic pathogen
Because C. albicans is an ascomycete, a framework for understanding its biology has been provided by the model ascomycete Saccharomyces cerevisiae, arguably one of the best studied and understood eukaryotic organisms

Summary

Invited Reviewers

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Introduction

Open Peer Review