Research Projects

The next pandemic is feared to be posed by antimicrobial resistance, calling for an urgent need for new drug targets and therapies. Antifungal resistance in Candida glabrata, a WHO-high-priority fungal pathogen, is rapidly increasing, rendering treatment difficult. The main resistance mechanism in C. glabrata and other pathogenic Candida species against the primary antifungal fluconazole is drug efflux by transmembrane transporters. This work aims to identify the vastly unexplored proteomic landscape of the clinically most-important fungal drug efflux transporter Cdr1, utilizing a novel nanobody-based native proteome capture. The new Cdr1 regulatory proteins expected to be identified in this study provide an ideal target for rational drug design and combinatorial therapies to counter drug resistance and chemosensitize C. glabrata to fluconazole.