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Updated: Nov 26, 2025

Broth Microdilution In Vitro Screening: An Easy and Fast Method to Detect New Antifungal Compounds
Published on: February 14, 2018
A diverse global fungal library for drug discovery
Guodong Niu1, Thirunavukkarasu Annamalai2, Xiaohong Wang1
1Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States of America.
Background:
Secondary fungal metabolites are important sources for new drugs against infectious diseases and cancers.
Methods:
To obtain a library with enough diversity, we collected about 2,395 soil samples and 2,324 plant samples from 36 regions in Africa, Asia, and North America. The collection areas covered various climate zones in the world. We examined the usability of the global fungal extract library (GFEL) against parasitic malaria transmission, Gram-positive and negative bacterial pathogens, and leukemia cells.
Results:
Nearly ten thousand fungal strains were isolated. Sequences of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) from 40 randomly selected strains showed that over 80% were unique. Screening GFEL, we found that the fungal extract from Penicillium thomii was able to block Plasmodium falciparum transmission to Anopheles gambiae, and the fungal extract from Tolypocladium album was able to kill myelogenous leukemia cell line K562. We also identified a set of candidate fungal extracts against bacterial pathogens.
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