Efficacy of Voriconazole against Aspergillus fumigatus Infection Depends on Host Immune Function.

ABSTRACT: Antifungal therapy can fail in a remarkable number of patients with invasive fungal disease, resulting in significant morbidity worldwide. A major contributor to this failure is that while these drugs have high potency in vitro, we do not fully understand how they work inside infected hosts. Here, we used a transparent larval zebrafish model of Aspergillus fumigatus infection amenable to real-time imaging of invasive disease as an in vivo intermediate vertebrate model to investigate the efficacy and mechanism of the antifungal drug voriconazole. We found that the ability of voriconazole to protect against A. fumigatus infection depends on host innate immune cells and, specifically, on the presence of macrophages. While voriconazole inhibits fungal spore germination and growth in vitro, it

SUBMITTER: Rosowski EE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6985743 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature