Targeting Fungal Hsp90: Role of Flavonoids in Overcoming Antifungal Resistance

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The growing prevalence of antifungal resistance has emerged as a significant global health challenge, reducing the effectiveness of existing antifungal medications and creating an urgent need for innovative therapeutic approaches. Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), an ATP-dependent molecular chaperone, plays a crucial role in fungal survival by regulating growth, stress adaptation, virulence, and antifungal resistance through the stabilization of essential signaling proteins involved in cellular homeostasis. Therefore, Hsp90 has gained considerable attention as a potential molecular target for antifungal drug discovery. Flavonoids, a structurally diverse class of naturally occurring polyphenolic compounds, possess a wide range of pharmacological properties, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antifungal activities. This review discusses the biological importance of flavonoids and examines their potential to overcome antifungal resistance by targeting Hsp90. Available evidence indicates that flavonoids may improve the therapeutic efficacy of conventional antifungal agents by regulating fungal stress-response mechanisms, suppressing efflux pump activity, disrupting cell wall and membrane integrity, and potentially binding to the conserved ATP-binding pocket of Hsp90. In addition, the review emphasizes the usefulness of molecular docking as an in silico screening tool for identifying flavonoids with strong binding affinity toward fungal Hsp90, thereby supporting future experimental validation. Overall, targeting fungal Hsp90 with flavonoid-based compounds represents a promising strategy for managing drug-resistant fungal infections and may contribute to the development of safer and more effective antifungal therapies.

Nanotechnology in Cancer Immunotherapy: Emerging Strategies, Clinical Translation, and Future Perspectives

Brij Raj Singh — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background: Immunotherapy for cancer has revolutionised modern oncology by preparing the immune system to attack and kill tumour cells. Its broad implementation is hindered by systemic toxicity, poor tumour-specific delivery, poor drug stability, as well as the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment (TME) despite its outstanding clinical success. Nanotechnology offers a possible approach to overcome these limitations by enabling targeted drug delivery, controlled release, improved bioavailability, and modulation of the TME.

Methods: Selected recent peer-reviewed articles from well-known scientific databases, such as Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed, to conduct a comprehensive literature review. To describe the design of nanomaterials, their mode of action, preclinical and clinical outcomes, and the problems associated with translation, an analysis and synthesis of the relevant literature were conducted.

Results: In recent years, several nanoplatforms such as lipid-based nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, inorganic nanomaterials, biomimetic nanocarriers, and exosome-inspired systems have been demonstrated to significantly improve the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. These nanocarriers reduce systemic toxicity and enhance the targeted delivery of cytokines, cancer vaccines, nucleic acid therapies, and immunological checkpoint inhibitors. Moreover, nanotechnology can also help in TME reprogramming, antigen presentation, activation of cytotoxic T cells, and therapeutic responses when combined with conventional therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation, and phototherapy. Nevertheless, therapeutic translation, regulatory clearance, long-term biosafety, and large-scale production remain significant challenges.

Conclusion: Nanotechnology provides a revolutionary approach in cancer immunotherapy to improve precision, safety, and therapeutic efficacy. Although there has been considerable progress in pre-clinical and initial clinical research, optimal clinical translation requires further enhancement of nanomaterial design parameters and regularization of production processes as well as rigorous clinical evaluation. In the future, it is hoped that interdisciplinary research will accelerate the development of personalized nano-immunotherapeutic techniques that can better control cancer. These reviews systematically summarize the recent advances of nano-immunotherapy, classify the major classes of functional nanomaterials, discuss the current challenges in clinical translation, and propose future directions.

Recent Trends in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research (e-ISSN: 2583-5718)

Targeting Fungal Hsp90: Role of Flavonoids in Overcoming Antifungal Resistance

Nanotechnology in Cancer Immunotherapy: Emerging Strategies, Clinical Translation, and Future Perspectives