2004 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 77-81
The major antifungal agents currently used in clinics fall into classes of either antibiotics or azoles. Recent introduction of a candin-antibiotic, micafungin, into clinical practice is expected to greatly improve the outcome of therapy in deep mycoses. However, there still exist many mycoses which are hard to treat even with application of a variety of antifungal agents.
With this situation of chemotherapy in mycoses, development of novel antifungal agents with good profiles in efficacy and safety and superior to those currently available are anticipated to be discovered by exploratory research. The major target worldwide in the research and development of novel antifungal agents is azole-class compounds. However, among the antifungal antibiotics now being developed, several compounds are being subjected to clinical evaluation based on their novel mechanisms of action and on their non-susceptible feature of cross-resistance to existing antifungal agents.
