UT Health Science Center College of Pharmacy Spearheads Battle Against Fungal Pathogens at Annual Conference

Members of the Tennessee Fungal Pathogens Group attended the 8th annual conference at Evins Mill in Smithville, TN. The group includes faculty, graduate assistants, and fellows from teaching and research institutions statewide, including UT Health Science Center, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Rhodes College, University of Memphis, Vanderbilt University, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and East Tennessee State University.

Unseen, deadly, and ubiquitous fungal pathogens pose an increasingly serious threat to global health, particularly among immunocompromised patients.

These pathogens evolve rapidly, often quickly developing resistance to antifungal drugs, reducing the effectiveness of available treatments. With the rise in immunosuppressive therapies and the increasing incidence and geographic spread of fungal infections aided by global climate change, there is an urgent need for collaborative efforts between research institutions to develop new therapies to combat fungal infections.

These issues led faculty within the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Experimental Therapeutics (CPET) to establish the Tennessee Fungal Pathogens Group Annual Research Conference and Retreat. Over eight years, the conference has become a vital gathering for fungal research laboratories across the state. The conference aims to create an environment conducive to trainees' development and foster collaboration among fungal pathogenesis researchers in Tennessee. The 8th annual conference was held at Evins Mill in Smithville, TN from June 12-14.

"When people think about fungal infections, they usually think of skin infections such as ringworm, which can be treated with over-the-counter cream," says Jarrod Fortwendel, a professor at the UT Health Science Center College of Pharmacy and Director of the CPET. "However, in some cases, fungal organisms can grow inside the body, causing deep-seated diseases that can spread throughout the body."

According to the World Health Organization, fungal infections pose an increasingly significant global public health concern, particularly affecting individuals with weakened immune systems or underlying health conditions. Factors such as advances in medical treatments, accessibility to immune-suppressing therapies, growing anti-fungal resistance, and the growing incidence and geographic reach of fungal infections are rising, which further impacts global health.

Attracting fungal pathogens researchers, chemists, biologists, clinicians, immunologists, and more, the annual gathering hopes to build connections and expertise between the top researchers in the state to combat fungal disease. "The endpoint is to improve patient outcomes," says Fortwendel. "This takes huge teams because you must have different perspectives. You certainly need people who are experienced at working with the organism, but you also need people who can, for example, provide expertise on the chemical biology and medicinal chemistry side when you are pursuing questions related to novel drug development."

The annual conference aims to build connections and expertise between top researchers in the state to combat fungal disease.

"It helps if those people are already sort of working in the antifungal space because they also know the language," says Fortwendel. "I mean, the expertise is right here in Tennessee. We don't have to go around the world to find it. We need people with different scientific backgrounds, or we'll never get to novel therapeutics fast enough. That's exactly what the power of this group is."

Treating fungal infections resistant to our available drugs is another matter too complicated for just one researcher. Unlike bacterial or viral infections, fungal physiology is very similar to that of the human patient, making successful treatment of fungal infections immensely complicated. However, the fungi that can cause human infections are incredibly different from one another. One researcher can be studying a fungal pathogen that develops drug resistance through a specific mechanism, while another researcher down the hall studies a separate fungal pathogen that responds to antifungals in a completely different way. This makes collaboration between researchers and disciplines essential if we are to work towards the effective use of currently available therapeutics for fungal diseases.

"The end goal of studying drug resistance is to save our current antifungals," says Fortwendel. "It takes decades to bring a new drug to the market, so working to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the antifungals we already have is incredibly important. There's a subset of individuals in the Tennessee Fungal Pathogens Group that are interested in solving this problem of resistance. Let's just figure out why it's happening and how we get around it."

Today, the conference is attended by researchers from every major institution across the state, including UT Health Science Center, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Rhodes College, University of Memphis, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, "We know when we work together, we can ask bigger questions," says Fortwendel.

Training new researchers was a primary goal of the conference's founding. Post-docs and graduate students from across the state can join the conference, present their research, and connect with established researchers. "The goals are to strengthen this group across the state of Tennessee, provide a space where those trainees can build their own networks, and get valuable feedback from the research community across the state," says Fortwendel. The annual meeting is designed to integrate breakout group interactions with structured oral presentations from graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty to accomplish these goals.

A featured speaker from outside the state attends the conference each year to provide a new angle or insight into combating fungal infections. This year's featured speaker was Marc Swidergall, PhD, Assistant Professor from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and an Investigator at the Lundquist Institute in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. An immunologist by training, Swidergall delivered an insightful lecture on immunometabolism and the regulation of host response during oral candidiasis in adults and neonates.

The conference has resulted in significant connections and collaborations, leading to numerous new grants and journal articles that advance the research of fungal pathogens nationwide. In the 2023-2024 academic year, the TN Fungal Pathogens group achieved several milestones, guiding students to prestigious postdoctoral positions at institutions such as Yale University School of Medicine, the University of Arkansas Medical Center, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Group members also contributed to high-impact scientific journals, including Science, Nature Microbiology, and Nature Communications. Additionally, UT Health Science Center faculty members who regularly attend the conference played a large part in the group collectively securing over $5.4 million in NIH funding in the past academic year.

In the future, the group is excited to continue fighting serious fungal infections across the state and around the world. They aim to conduct scientific research in their labs and encourage interactions that will improve patient outcomes. This could involve faster diagnosis, the development of new drugs, or making current drugs even more effective.

For more information on the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Experimental Therapeutics visit https://www.uthsc.edu/pharmacy/dcpts/cpet.php.

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