METHOD FOR THE REAL-TIME MEASUREMENT OF A WALL THICKNESS AND USES THEREOF

Fungal diseases are highly relevant to human health and agriculture. 
In Humans, Candidiasis, Aspergillosis or Cryptococcosis mostly affect immunocompromised patients and cause death penalties of ~1.7 million deaths per year. In plants, fungal diseases cause around 10-30% loss in crops representing a risk for food availability. While anti-fungal treatments remain unsatisfactory to date due to species diversity and adaptation mechanisms, we need new tools to assess the efficiency of newly developed drugs. Cell wall thickness is critical for the survival and development of fungal cells. 
The team has developed a new method based on light microscopy and image analysis pipelines to monitor Cell Wall thickness in live cells and in large populations of living cells, thereby allowing to quickly and accurately define the thickness of the cell wall. This method can be used in fundamental and applied research, and is compatible with screening strategies to allow the identification of new agents capable of altering the cell wall.

Applications

• Microbiology/Infectiology 
• Anti-fungal Drug Screening for fungal diseases affecting humans and crops
• Fundamental and applied research tool to assess cell wall integrity

Competitive advantages

• No need to fix the cell
• Allows dynamic observation of the cell wall
• Spatio-temporal maps of cell wall thickness in live cells, with a precision of +/-10-20nm
• Less time-consuming than Electron Microscopy and Biochemical fractionation

Intellectual property

Patent Application EP2017/070729

Keywords

Imaging Method  -  Cell Wall thickness  -  Live imaging Fungal diseases  -  Screening