Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities
As both antibiotic producers and deadly pathogens, necessary members of ecosystems and invasive species, understanding the complexity of the Fungal Kingdom demands a multidisciplinary approach. CIFAR’s team includes diverse experts who interrogate the unique facets of fungal biology to mitigate the threats posed by fungi and harness their extraordinary potential.
RESEARCH AND SOCIETAL IMPACT HIGHLIGHTS
Addressing global challenges and fundal threats
The program partnered with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in November 2021 to hold a Future of Mycology Workshop. The meeting united program members with experts from industry and academia to identify priorities to global challenges and fungal threats. An engaged discussion culminated in the development of recommendations on connections between fungi and climate change; fungal threats to humans; fungal threats to food security; fungal threats to animals; and opportunities presented by the fungal kingdom.
A leap forward in antifungal discovery
Program Co-Directors Leah Cowen (University of Toronto) and Joseph Heitman (Duke University), along with Fellows Charles Boone (University of Toronto), Christina Cuomo (Broad Institute), and Gerard Wright (McMaster University) have launched a vibrant collaborative program that focuses on innovative strategies to address the urgent need for novel antifungals. Together, the team has screened powerful and diverse chemical libraries, including natural products and derivatives, to identify molecules that kill fungal pathogens or abrogate resistance to the leading antifungals used in the clinic. The team has leveraged structure-guided approaches to optimize potency and fungal selectivity of lead molecules and has developed deep learning approaches for antifungal discovery. In the past year, team members have published several papers with a transformative impact on thwarting antimicrobial resistance.
Improving health through fungal diagnostics
Program members explored opportunities to improve human health through a virtual multi-sector meeting convening almost 50 participants. The meeting included select industry guests as well as Fungal Diagnostics Laboratory Consortium members, who represent North America’s top-tier clinical laboratories conducting fungal diagnostics — including health agencies, universities and research hospitals as well as Canadian national and provincial labs (public health agencies of Canada, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec). Together with program members, they explored shared challenges and opportunities in fungal diagnostics to identify the potential for new, multi-centre collaborations.
Applications Now Open: CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program
The Fungal Kingdom spans as many as six million eukaryotic species, and is remarkable in terms of the breadth and depth of impact on global health, agriculture, biodiversity, ecology, manufacturing, and biomedical research. CIFAR's Fungal Kingdom: Threats & Opportunities program seeks to address the fundamental challenge of understanding the unique facets of fungal biology that impart a range of remarkable properties, with the goal of developing new strategies to mitigate threats posed by fungi and to harness their extraordinary potential; the urgency and magnitude of these threats and opportunities are further amplified in the context of climate change. The program’s interdisciplinary team encompasses exceptional strength in fungal genomics, infectious disease, food security, biodiversity, and chemistry, and is dedicated to bringing together state-of-the-art approaches in functional genomics, chemical biology, computational biology, cell biology, and experimental models of infection in a sustained collaborative research network. The program is tackling four grand challenges: 1) understand forces driving the emergence, evolution, and spread of fungi impacting plants, animals, and human health and society; 2) identify mechanisms of fungal adaptation and interactions with hosts and other microbes; 3) understand the evolution of resistance to fungicides and antifungals across the fungal kingdom; and 4) develop novel strategies to thwart fungal disease. The program will explore these themes with scholars from diverse areas of expertise, ranging from ecology and field work and epidemiology to genetics, genomics, and biology of fungal threats to the health of our planet and its resident species.
This new report, One Health: Fungal Pathogens of Humans, Animals, and Plants, highlights the remarkable advances in the field and provides updated recommendations to address scientific and public health challenges today.
Program member authors: Arturo Casadevall, John W. Taylor, Joseph Heitman, and Leah Cowen
Founded
2019
Supporters
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Molecular genetics
Microbiology
Epidemiology
Bioinformatics
Public Health
Biochemistry
CIFAR Contact
Fellows & Advisors
Program Directors
Leah E. Cowen
Program Co-Director
Joseph Heitman
Program Co-Director
Fellows
David S. Blehert
Fellow
U.S. Geological Survey
Charles M. Boone
Fellow
Genetic Networks
Christina A. Cuomo
Fellow
Cameron Currie
Fellow
Matthew C. Fisher
Fellow
Lillian Fritz-Laylin
Fellow
Sarah Jane Gurr
Fellow
Tim James
Fellow
Hailing Jin
Fellow
Bruce Klein
Fellow
James Kronstad
Fellow
Don Sheppard
Fellow
Jason E. Stajich
Fellow
Eva H. Stukenbrock
Fellow
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology
Gerard Wright
Fellow
Advisors
Arturo Casadevall
Advisory Committee Chair
David Denning
Advisor
Neil Gow
Advisor
Regine Kahmann
Advisor
John Taylor
Advisor
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars
Iuliana V. Ene
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars 2021-2023
Aleeza Gerstein
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars 2021-2023
Rebecca Shapiro
CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars 2021-2023
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CIFAR is a registered charitable organization supported by the governments of Canada, Alberta and Quebec, as well as foundations, individuals, corporations and Canadian and international partner organizations.