FLY FUNGAL INTERPLAY

Dissecting innate immunity to airborne opportunistic fungi through a genome-wide screen in Drosophila

Coordinatore	FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS    more  Organization address address: N PLASTIRA STR 100 city: HERAKLION postcode: 70013 contact info Titolo: Prof. Nome: Dimitrios Cognome: Boumpas Email: send email Telefono: 302810000000 Fax: 302810000000
Nazionalità Coordinatore	Greece [EL]
Totale costo	100˙000 €
EC contributo	100˙000 €
Programma	FP7-PEOPLE Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)
Code Call	FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG
Funding Scheme	MC-IRG
Anno di inizio	2010
Periodo (anno-mese-giorno)	2010-10-01   -   2014-09-30

 Partecipanti

#	participant	country	role	EC contrib. [€]
1	FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS  Organization address address: N PLASTIRA STR 100 city: HERAKLION postcode: 70013 contact info Titolo: Prof. Nome: Dimitrios Cognome: Boumpas Email: send email Telefono: 302810000000 Fax: 302810000000	EL (HERAKLION)	coordinator	100˙000.00

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'In recent years, airborne filamentous fungi have become major causes of life-threatening infections in an expanding population of severely immunocompromised individuals. Aspergillus remains the most common fungal pathogen in these patients, whereas Zygomycetes are emerging causes of fatal invasive fungal infections in many cancer institutions. Overall, the increasing frequency and spectrum of invasive fungal infections and the alarming rates of resistance to antifungal agents in fungi underscores the need to expand our knowledge on the immunopathogenesis of opportunistic fungal infections and develop novel therapeutic strategies. Importantly, the versatility of virulence mechanisms of fungi and the complexity of host defense mechanisms against fungi highlights the importance of understanding the molecular aspects of host-fungal interplay in robust experimental systems. Over the past decade, invertebrate mini-host models with well-characterized genetics and less complex immunity have been effectively used to explore several aspects of both fungal pathogenicity and antifungal host defense. These properties coupled with the robust genetics in Drosophila, make flies an ideal model to study the molecular aspects of host-fungal interaction. We have recently implemented Drosophila melanogaster as a model to study virulence mechanisms and the molecular aspects of host immune response to Zygomycetes. Surprisingly, we found that key aspects of the pathophysiology of zygomycosis in humans were appropriately modeled in fruit flies. In this proposal we expand on our previous work to: (a) Identify novel genes involved in Drosophila immunity against the most important airborne opportunistic fungi, Aspergillus and Zygomycetes, by performing a genome-wide screening strategy in Drosophila RNAi lines. (b) Confirm in humans the functional role of novel Drosophila host defense genes by silencing the relevant homologues in human phagocytic cells'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Fungi are emerging pathogens across a broad range of hosts including plants and humans. Delineating the mechanism of immune evasion is central to designing efficacious therapeutic strategies.