Peer Abdul Haseeb Shah

Globally, over 300 million people are affected by serious fungal infections, with more than 1.5 million deaths annually. WHO has listed few of the fungal species in the fungal Priority pathogenicity list since they are identified as pathogens of critical or high priority because of development of drug resistance to limited available antifungal drugs. My research interests are focused mainly on understanding the basic biology and drug resistance, in human pathogenic fungi, mostly belonging to the genus Candida. We also study the functioning of novel antifungals which can be put to human use. Lately, I have been trying to develop the modified azole antifungals since development of new antifungals is time consuming and costly exercise. The emergence and spread of multi-drug resistant human pathogenic fungi that have acquired different drug resistance mechanisms continue to threaten the ability to treat common fungal infections. The current antifungal strategy needs to be improved given the limitations and accessibility of antifungal treatment regimens at the moment. Thus, our work is directly focussed on lowering the burden of infections and deaths related to human fungal pathogens which have been increasing at alarming rate particularly at the times when immune supressed patients are increasing globally.