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Hitting the caspofungin salvage pathway of human-pathogenic fungi with the novel lasso peptide humidimycin (MDN-0010)

ABSTRACT: Fungal infections have increased dramatically in the last two decades and fighting infectious diseases require innovative approaches such as the combination of two drugs acting on different targets, or even target a salvage pathway of one of the drugs. The fungal cell wall biosynthesis is inhibited by the clinically used antifungal drug caspofungin. This antifungal activity has been found to be potentiated by humidimycin, a new natural product identified from the screening of a collection of 20,000 microbial extracts and with no major effect when used alone. The analysis of transcriptomes and selected A. fumigatus mutants indicated that humidimycin affects the high osmolarity glycerol response pathway. By combining humidimycin and caspofungin a strong increase of caspofungin efficacy was achieved, demonstrating that targeting different signaling pathways provides an excellent basis to develop novel anti-infective strategies.

ORGANISM(S): Aspergillus fumigatus

PROVIDER: GSE55663 | GEO | 2015/06/03

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA240324

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Enterococcus faecium has become a major opportunistic pathogen with the emergence of multidrug-resistant clones that are well-adapted to the hospital environment. As part of the vast diversity of gut microbiota, they are faced with different environmental stress, including antimicrobial pressure. By contrast, little is known about the effect of non-antibiotic molecules on bacterial physiology while numerous drugs are used in inpatients, especially those hospitalized in intensive care units (ICUs). The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the most prescribed xenobiotics in ICUs on fitness, pathogenicity and antimicrobial resistance of E. faecium. Several phenotypic analysis was carried out and we rapidly brought to light that caspofungin, an antifungal agent belonging to the echinocandin family, seemed to have an important impact on E. faecium growth. Since the fungal target of caspofungin [beta-(1,3)-glucan synthase] is absent in enterococci, the mechanism of caspofungin action was investigated by several approaches. First, we decided to confirm this result by electronic microscopy and a peptidoglycan analysis by Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). Again, we highlighted that caspofungin even at subinhibitory concentrations (SICs) seemed to have an impact on cell wall organization especially in muropeptide precursors abundance. Then, a transcriptomic analysis was performed by RNA-seq (HiSeq 2500, Illumina) using the vanB-positive reference strain E. faecium Aus0004 in the presence or absence of caspofungin SIC (8 mg/L i.e., ¼ of the MIC). Transcriptomic analysis showed that the expression of 568 genes (19.9% of the genome) was significantly altered in the presence of caspofungin SIC, with 323 genes induced (fold change >2, p-value <0.1) and 245 genes repressed (fold change <-2, p-value <0.1). Regarding the repressed genes, the pdhABCD operon is largely downregulated (fold changes -4.3, -9.7, -6.9 and -6.4, respectively). This operon encoded components of the pyruvate deshydrogenase multienzyme complex involved in bacterial energetic pathway by the citrate cycle (i.e., TCA cycle). Moreover, it seemed that the glycerol metabolism pathway and in particular the glpOKF operon is downregulated too. The dramatic alteration of TCA seemed to have an drastic impact on bacterial cells viability indeed decrease of glycerol metabolism could explain the conformational modifications of peptidoglycan.

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Hitting the caspofungin salvage pathway of human-pathogenic fungi with the novel lasso peptide humidimycin (MDN-0010)

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