The fight against fungi

A handful of scientists in academia and at small companies are working to increase the power of the antifungal stockpile. They’re designing drugs to go after new antifungal targets, creating new classes of drugs to attack existing targets, and modifying antifungal drugs to make them more selective or easier to take. The success or failure of these compounds, both as viable fungal fighters and as pharmaceutical investments, will become apparent in the next couple of years as they face approval from regulators and a tough marketplace for anti-infectives.