Evaluation of Ca37 monoclonal antibody against pathogenic fungal Candidozyma auris

Candidozyma auris, previously known as Candida auris, is a recently found pathogenic yeast that causes systemic infections, showing a high mortality rate. Moreover, this species is highly resistant to the commonly used antifungal drugs and some of the strains are multiresistant. This fungus is also able to cause outbreaks in hospital settings. All of this has cause an alarm in the health care system. Therefore, finding alternative treatments for C. auris is critical. In this sense, our research group developed a monoclonal antibody (Ca37) against Candida albicans alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme (Adh) that successfully reduced the growth of the fungus in vitro and also showed a protective effect in vivo. Due to the high homology between both fungal alcohol dehydrogenases, we wanted to test the effect of Ca37 over C. auris. In order to do this, first we assessed if the monoclonal antibody also recognized C. auris Adh by sequencing the spots detected by two dimensional western blot when using the monoclonal antibody as first antibody. Two spots were detected in this western blot. The sequencing showed a mixture of proteins, but in both cases, Adh was one of the identified proteins.