Antifungal Compounds from Microbial Symbionts Associated with Aquatic Animals and Cellular Targets: A Review

Abstract

Fungal infections continue to be a serious public health problem, leading to an estimated 1.6 million deaths annually. It remains a major cause of mortality for people with a weak or affected immune system, such as those suffering from cancer under aggressive chemotherapies. On the other hand, pathogenic fungi are counted among the most destructive factors affecting crops, causing a third of all food crop losses annually and critically affecting the worldwide economy and food security. However, the limited number currently available and the cytotoxicity of the conventional antifungal drugs, which are not yet properly diversified in terms of mode of action, in addition to resistance phenomena, make the search for new antifungals imperative to improve both human health and food protection. Symbiosis has been a crucial alternative for drug discovery, through which many antimicrobials have been discovered. This review highlights some antifungal models of a defensive symbiosis of microbial symbiont natural products derived from interacting with aquatic animals as one of the best opportunities. Some recorded compounds with supposed novel cell targets such as apoptosis could lead to the development of a multitherapy involving the mutual treatment of fungal infections and other metabolic diseases involving apoptosis in their pathogenesis pathways.

Keywords: antifungal compounds; aquatic animals; cellular targets; microbial symbionts.