Trojan Horse effect: toxic metal complexes with potential anti-fungal activity

• Grant number: 21/10397-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2021
• End date: October 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Inorganic Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Breno Pannia Esposito
• Grantee: Bruna Letícia Webler
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Candidiasis is an opportunistic mycosis that can affect several places in the body, is caused by Candida spp. Although this species lives in the microbiota of 80% of the healthy population in commensalism, when there is an imbalance in immunity, vaginal pH, or dysfunction of the intestinal microbiota, this yeast becomes pathogenic. With the increase in immunosuppressed patients, this disease has become more recurrent and more serious, due to acquired resistance to the main drugs used to combat it, especially azoles. In the search for new treatments in medical inorganic chemistry, it is possible to hijack essential metal acquisition routes, using ligands normally incorporated by the parasite to transport toxic metal ions ("Trojan Horse" strategy). In this project, complexes of cobalt (III), chromium(III), and ruthenium(III) with the siderophore desferrioxamine, lactate, and peptides derived from peptone will be prepared, characterized and their antifungal activity determined against C. albicans. (AU)