Invasive fungal infections are life-threatening diseases that predominantly affect vulnerable patient groups such as cancer patients, transplant recipients and intensive care unit patients. Global mortality rates due to these infections have been linked to over 3.75 million deaths and an additional 6.5 million people that suffer annually from severe, deep-seated infections. In addition, antifungal innovation is not only lagging and more complicated than antibiotic development, but multi-resistant fungal pathogens are also emerging at an alarming rate. This signifies a need to develop new antifungal therapeutic options that can overcome antifungal resistance.
Motivated by this urgent and escalating global health problem, we received 500 000 NOK from the Norwegian Research Council for our project entitled “NR-6226C: A Novel Antifungal Candidate to Overcome Drug-Resistant Candida Infections”. The project proposal was developed in close collaboration with Joachim Paasche from UiO Growth House, which is a collaboration between the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at UiO to promote innovation in the research environment.
This project will be based on the lead iron chelator compound, NR-6226C, which has been studied and characterized previously in our lab. Our key project objective will be to advance NR-6226C from preclinical discovery and characterization to commercial readiness. The outcomes will include compound optimization to establish patentability and to demonstrate efficacy of the compound in animal models. Ultimately, our goal will be to set the groundwork and strengthen our lead compound’s position for intellectual property patent filing and commercial readiness.