RNA interference and nanomedicine team up to fight dangerous fungal infections

Summary

by Kirstin Linkamp, Universitätsklinikum Würzburg A digital cover illustration for the journal Nanoscale (2025, Volume 17, Page 7002). Credit: Andreas Beilhack, created with Procreate Fungal infections are on the rise globally. According to a study by the Manchester Fungal Infection Group, in 2022, approximately 6.5 million people were infected by a pathogenic fungus, and about 3.8 million died as a result—nearly twice as many as in 2012. Even with medications, known as antifungals, the mortality rate for invasive infections caused by the mold Aspergillus fumigatus is as high as 85%. As resistant fungal strains increase, treatment becomes more difficult, and new therapies are urgently needed. A research team from Würzburg has succeeded for the first time in packaging small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) with Amphotericin B (AmB) in anionic liposomes to specifically target the dangerous mold fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. The study, published in the journal Nanoscale and highlighted on the back cover, demonstrates that this RNAi approach shuts down vital fungal genes, thereby inhibiting pathogen growth—a groundbreaking step in the development of new antifungal therapies. RNAi combined with optimized delivery technology To specifically target the mold Aspergillus fumigatus, the researchers combined an RNAi approach with optimized delivery technology from nanomedicine. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) plays a central role in the implementation of genetic information. RNA interference (RNAi) acts like a "gene switch," selectively silencing specific genes. It uses specialized RNA molecules, such as small interfering RNA (siRNA) or microRNA (miRNA), to block genetic instructions needed for protein production. "Our study builds on the discovery of RNA interference, for which the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded in 2006. While siRNA therapies have already been used for genetic diseases, our work is the first successful application of this technology against a human pathogenic fungus in ...