Why It's Important to Continue to Develop New Antifungals

Segment Description: Minh-Hong Nguyen, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, explains why it's so important to continue developing new antifungal drugs.

Interview transcript (modified slightly for readability):

Contagion®: Why is it so important to continue to develop new antifungal drugs?

Dr. Nguyen: Just like bacteria, the more we use of a drug, the chance for the organism to develop resistance is very high. For example, among the Candida species beside Candida glabrata, we now see Candida auris infect a lot of patients throughout the US. The problem with Candida auris is that it tends to be multidrug-resistant, including echinocandin-resistant so the discovery of new drugs really, really helps in the management of our patients.