Discovery and Repurposing of Pharmaceutical Agents as Antifungals: In vivo activity against Coccidioides

Abstract

There is significant interest in identifying improved treatments for coccidioidomycosis, an endemic fungal infection found in the southwestern United States, and Central and South America. The current standard of care, fluconazole, often fails to completely eradicate Coccidioides infection; however, the cost of identifying new compounds is often high in terms of both finances and time. Therefore, repurposing existing pharmaceutical agents is an attractive option. In our previous work, we identified several compounds which inhibited fungal growth in vitro. Based on these findings, we screened a subset of these agents to increase the performance of fluconazole in a combination therapy approach, as compared to fluconazole alone, in a murine model. We observed that combination therapy of sertraline:fluconazole significantly reduced the amount of live fungus in the lung compared to fluconazole alone. These results suggest that sertraline can be repurposed as an adjunctive agent in the treatment of this important fungal disease.