Screening of Compounds from an FDA-Approved Drug Library for the Ability to Inhibit Aspartic Protease Secretion from the Pathogenic Yeast Candida albicans

The pathogenic fungus Candida albicans causes disseminated candidiasis with a poor prognosis in immunocompromised hosts. Secreted aspartyl protease (Sap) from the microorganism acts as a hydrolase to facilitate invasion into host tissues. Inhibition of Candida Sap activity could be a new treatment strategy for candidiasis. In the present study, we screened compounds from an FDA-approved drug library, Screen-WellTM, for their ability to inhibit Candida Sap activity. Sixteen compounds (piroxicam, carbidopa, nisoldipine, cerivastatin, fluvastatin, mycophenolic acid, rapamycin, bleomycin, bortezomib, 5-fluorouracil, floxuridine, fumagillin, pentamidine, albendazole, fenbendazole, and amprenavir) inhibited Sap activity in a dose-dependent manner in vitro, although strain differences in the activity of the compounds were observed. Our study shows that existing drug compounds have the potential to inhibit Sap activity. *Corresponding author: Sugita T, Department of Microbiology, Meiji Pharmaceutical University, Noshio, Kiyose, Tokyo 204-8588, Japan, Tel: +81-42495-8762; E-mail: [email protected] Received August 21, 2014; Accepted September 16, 2014; Published September 19, 2014 Citation: Cho O, Shiokama T, Ando Y, Aoki N, Uehara C, et al. (2014) Screening of Compounds from an FDA-Approved Drug Library for the Ability to Inhibit Aspartic Protease Secretion from the Pathogenic Yeast Candida albicans. Pharmaceut Reg Affairs 3: 126. doi:10.4172/2167-7689.1000126 Copyright: © 2014 Cho O, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.