Hyper-Synergistic Antifungal Activity of Rapamycin and Peptide-Like Compounds against Candida albicans Orthogonally via Tor1 Kinase.

Candida albicans is a life-threatening, opportunistic fungal pathogen with a high mortality rate, especially within the immunocompromised populations. Multidrug resistance combined with limited antifungal drugs even worsens the situation. Given the facts that the current drug discovery strategies fail to deliver sufficient antifungals for the emerging multidrug resistance, we urgently need to develop novel approaches. By systematically investigating what caused the different antifungal activity of rapamycin in RPMI 1640 and YPD, we discovered that peptide-like compounds can generate a hyper-synergistic antifungal effect with rapamycin on both azole-resistant and sensitive clinical C. albicans isolates. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of rapamycin reaches as low as 2.14 nM (2-9 µg/mL), distinguishing this drug combination as a hyper-synergism by having a fractional inhibitory concentration (FIC) index ≤ 0.05 from the traditional defined synergism with an FIC index < 0.5. Further studies reveal that this hyper-synergism orthogonally targets the protein Tor1 and affects the TOR signaling pathway in C. albicans, very likely without crosstalk to the stress response, Ras/cAMP/PKA, or calcineurin signaling pathways. These results lead to a novel strategy of controlling drug resistant C. albicans infection in the immunocompromised populations. Instead of prophylactically administering other antifungals with undesirable side-effects for extended durations, we now only need to coadminister some nontoxic peptide additives. The novel antifungal strategy approached in this study not only provides a new therapeutic method to control fungal infections in rapamycin-taking immunocompromised patients but also mitigates the immunosuppressive side-effects of rapamycin, repurposing rapamycin as an antifungal agent with wide applications.

Antitubercular metabolites from the marine-derived fungus strain Aspergillus fumigatus MF029.

During the systematic screening of bioactive compounds from our marine natural product library, crude extract of the marine-derived fungus strain Aspergillus fumigatus MF029 exhibited moderate bioactivities against Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant S. aureus, and Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG). Further chemical investigation resulted in the identification of two new compounds, chaetominine A (1) and sphingofungin I (2), together with four known compounds, emodin (3), chaetominine (4), sphingofungin D (5) and trypacidin (6). Trypacidin displayed potential antitubercular activity with MIC value of 1.25 µg/mL.

Benzophenone C-glucosides and gallotannins from mango tree stem bark with broad-spectrum anti-viral activity.

The high mutation rate of RNA viruses has resulted in limitation of vaccine effectiveness and increased emergence of drug-resistant viruses. New effective antivirals are therefore needed to control of the highly mutative RNA viruses. The n-butanol fraction of the stem bark of Mangifera indica exhibited inhibitory activity against influenza neuraminidase (NA) and coxsackie virus 3C protease. Bioassay guided phytochemical study of M. indica stem bark afforded two new compounds including one benzophenone C-glycoside (4) and one xanthone dimer (7), together with eleven known compounds. The structures of these isolated compounds were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic evidences and correlated with known compounds. Anti-influenza and anti-coxsackie virus activities were evaluated by determining the inhibition of anti-influenza neuraminidase (NA) from pandemic A/RI/5+/1957 H2N2 influenza A virus and inhibition of coxsackie B3 virus 3C protease, respectively. The highest anti-influenza activity was observed for compounds 8 and 9 with IC50 values of 11.9 and 9.2µM, respectively. Compounds 8 and 9 were even more potent against coxsackie B3 virus 3C protease, with IC50 values of 1.1 and 2.0µM, respectively. Compounds 8 and 9 showed weak cytotoxic effect against human hepatocellular carcinoma and human epithelial carcinoma cell lines through MTT assay.

Antiviral activity of an isatin derivative via induction of PERK-Nrf2-mediated suppression of cap-independent translation.

We report here an isatin derivative 45 (ID45) against coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) replication, which was synthesized based on a high-throughput screen of a unique natural product library. ID45 showed the most potent anti-CVB3 activity among the four synthesized compounds. Treatment of cells with ID45 before or after infection significantly reduced viral particle formation, resulting in protection of cells from virus-induced apoptosis. In addition, ID45 treatment caused remarkable up-regulation of glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78), a hallmark of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and an indicator of enhanced cell viability. In identifying the ER stress response pathway induced by ID45, we found that ID45 activated PKR-like ER protein kinase (PERK) but failed to up-regulate eIF2α phosphorylation. Instead ID45 activated transcription factor Nrf2 (NF-E2-related factor-2), which is evidenced by its nuclear translocation and upregulation of its downstream target genes NQO1 (NAD(P)H quinone-oxidoreductase 1) and GCLM (glutamate-cysteine ligase, modifier subunit). This observation was further verified by using siRNAs of GRP78 or Nrf2, which blocked both the translocation of Nrf2 and up-regulation of its target genes, leading to aggressive viral replication and enhanced cell apoptosis. Finally, we found that ID45-induced up-regulation of NQO1 protected eIF4GI, a eukaryotic cap-dependent translation initiation factor, from cleavage by CVB3 protease and degradation by proteasomes. Taken together, our findings established that a novel antiviral mechanism of isatin derivative ID45 inhibits CVB3 replication by promoting cell survival through a PERK/Nrf2-dependent ER stress pathway, which benefits host cap-dependent translation but suppresses CVB3 cap-independent translation.