Evaluation of Panfungal Polymerase Chain Reaction in Early Detection of Invasive Fungal Infections in Egyptian Patients with Hematological Malignancies.

The incidence of invasive fungal infections (IFIs) has increased owing to the rising number of immunodeficient patients. A case-control study was performed at the Ain Shams University Hospitals, Cairo, Egypt. The case group (n = 80) included 80 patients diagnosed with hematological malignancies, and the control group (n = 20) included 20 patients. All patients were tested for the presence of fungal species using blood culture and panfungal real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Fungal species differentiation was performed using high-resolution melting (HRM) PCR. There were 39 suspected cases of IFIs among the 80 patients. The panfungal RT-PCR detection rate was 51.3% (41/80). HRM-PCR identified that 51.2% of the fungal species were Candida albicans, 44.0% were non-Candida albicans, and 4.9% were Mucor. The blood cultures were positive for the presence of fungi in two patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The fungal detection rate using the panfungal RT-PCR technique was significantly higher than that using the blood culture technique (P < 0.001). RT-PCR using panfungal markers is sensitive, rapid, and superior to the blood culture technique to detect IFIs. HRM-PCR is a specific test for species identification.

Improvement of caffeic acid biotransformation into para-hydroxybenzoic acid by Candida albicans CI-24 via gamma irradiation and model-based optimization.

Para-hydroxybenzoic acid (PHBA) has great potential in biological applications due to its putative antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 and its antimicrobial activity in the face of the radically increasing number of multidrug-resistant pathogens. This is in addition to its antimutagenic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, hypoglycemic, antiestrogenic, and antiplatelet aggregating activities. In this study, an approximate sixfold increase in the production of PHBA was achieved via biotransformation of caffeic acid by Candida albicans. The improvement was performed in two steps: first, through mutation by gamma irradiation (5 KGy dose), resulting in the recovery of a mutant (CI-24), which produced approximately triple the amount of PHBA produced by the wild-type isolate. Then, biotransformation by this mutant was further optimized via response surface methodology model-based optimization. The maximum PHBA production (7.47 mg/mL) was obtained in a fermentation medium composed of 1% w/v yeast extract as a nitrogen source, with an initial pH of 6.6, incubated at 28 °C at an agitation rate of 250 rpm. To further enhance the performance and economics of the process, cells of the CI-24 mutant were immobilized in calcium alginate beads and could retain an equivalent biotransformation capacity after three successive biotransformation cycles.