Histatina 5 e novas estratégias no combate à Candida albicans

• Autor(a) principal: Zolin, Gabriela Vieira Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/213665
• topic: Agentes antifúngicos; Histatina 5; Candida albicans

Oral candidiasis is one of the most common fungal infections in the oral cavity, affecting mostly patients with immunologic system suppressed by diseases like HIV and cancer. Candidiasis is caused by species from Candida gender, especially Candida albicans, which are presented as a polymorphic commensal fungi that can be found naturally in the microbiota of human population. Through morphological transition between yeast and hyphal cells, C. albicans is capable of starting an infection that, although happens most commonly in mucosal tissues, can disseminate through blood becoming a systemic infection, which presents high morbidity and mortality rates. An aggravant of C. albicans infections is the resistance that has been developing in the last decades for antifungal medicine used in treatments to combat the infection. In fact, antimicrobial resistance is considered by WHO as one of ten biggest human health threats the world faces nowadays. Therefore, the search for new antifungal agents capable of overcoming the antifungal resistance barriers is urgent and essential. Histatin 5 is a 24 amino acid antimicrobial peptide of histatin family, that can be found naturally in human saliva, and presents a potent antifungal activity against C. albicans cells, being then a potential antifungal agent of great interest. Histatin 5 activity can be impaired for interaction with molecules present in the oral cavity, and some resistance mechanisms to its action has already been observed in C. albicans cells Thus, there are many proposals in development aimed at increasing efficiency antifungal for histatin 5. This work presents some of these proposals, involving metal-peptide complexes and nanoparticles carriers as an alternative to fighting the important oral candidiasis pathogen, C. albicans.