Daan van Aalten’s project entitled Targeting the linchpins of Aspergillus fumigatus cell wall synthesis will be carried out with co-applicant Wenxia Fang from the Guangxi Academy of Sciences. The project will target the "Achilles heel" of fungal cell wall synthesis - the production of the sugar nucleotide precursors UDP-Glc, UDP-GlcNAc - using a combination of genetics, biochemistry, structural biology, fragment-based inhibitor design, and synthetic chemistry.

Accounting for an estimated 2.5 million deaths a year, infectious diseases caused by dangerous, invasive pathogenic fungi are arguably even more neglected than AMR. Patients with weakened immune systems (such as people with chronic conditions like HIV or diabetes or undergoing cancer or transplant treatments) are especially vulnerable to invasive fungal infections. But we do not know nearly enough about these dangerous fungi and have a very limited amount of anti-fungal treatments in our arsenal.

In his Catalyst Grant project, Professor Daan van Aalten wants to understand how proteins responsible for producing UDP-Glc, UDP-GlcNAc work in one of the most invasive pathogenic fungi, namely Aspergillus fumigatus. “This work can ultimately lead to the identification of opportunities for the discovery of novel anti-fungal drugs,” says Daan van Aalten.

The Infectious Diseases Catalyst Grants is a new grant type offered by the Novo Nordisk Foundation with the goal to fund exploratory research projects within the areas Pathogenic Fungi, Novel Antimicrobial Resistance Tools and Harnessing Innate Immunity. The grants are up to DKK 6 million over three years for projects involving an international collaborator.

More information

Professor Daan van Aalten
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics
Aarhus University, Denmark
daan@mbg.au.dk

This article is based on a news article from the Novo Nordisk Foundation