The MeMoF prject seeks to improve diagnossis of fungal co-infections particulary those of pulmonary origin. Fungi are ecologically regarded environmental saprophytes that feed on decaying organic matter. However, over the past 30 years, fungi have transitioned into key etiological agents for difficult to manage infections, killing at least 1 million people each year and yet remain among the most neglected diseases worldwide. The very serious invasive fungal infections occur in the immunocompromised such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and transplant patients, all of which have increased dramatically in the last 20 years.
Our Mission & Vision
Mission
To improve diagnosis of pulmonary mycoses among at-risk individuals
Vision
To define relevance and create awareness of the medical importance of opportunistic fungal infections
Clinical manifestations of fungal infections have ranged from superficial to disseminated diseases with rates of invasive opportunistic fungal infections having up-surged during recent decades. These often occur as co-infections reported to about 35% in the HIV/TB co-infected cohort. This is posing enormous challenges to health care professionals especially in resource limited settings where diagnosis is not precise. However, there is an emerging and interesting twist to fungal aetiology where cross-kingdom synergy appears to impact fungal virulence.
For instance, there are reports that bacteria influence eukaryotic biology as parasites, commensals or beneficial symbionts in addition to acting as sources of new genetic sequences through subtle mechanisms such as horizontal gene transfer. In this context, co-existence of fungi with other microbes such as bacteria in the same infection niche may unveil highly coordinated metabolic or molecular interaction profiles yet to be explored. Here we hypothesize that fungal-bacterial co-existence influences fungal virulence and that the current burden of opportunistic pulmonary co-infections is higher than current culture dependent results suggests.
This proposal will support the PI to gain advanced skills in metagenomics, a high throughput technique that can be used to study poly-microbial interactions in an infection niche.