Drug Target Elucidation Through Isolation and Analysis of Drug-Resistant Mutants in Cryptococcus neoformans

Abstract

Drug target identification is an essential component to antifungal drug development. Many methods, including large chemical library screening, natural product screening, and drug repurposing efforts, can identify compounds with favorable in vitro antifungal activity. However, these approaches will often identify compounds with no known mechanism of action. Herein, we describe a method utilizing the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans to identify antifungal drug targets through the isolation of spontaneous resistant mutants, antifungal testing, whole-genome sequencing, and variant analysis.

Keywords: Antifungal; Mechanism of action; SNP calling; Spontaneous mutants; Therapeutic target; Variant identification; Whole-genome sequencing.