The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) mechanism at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded a USD 1.0 million R44 grant to Curatix, a New Haven, Connecticut-based biopharmaceutical company, to advance a class of antifungal adjuvant molecules aimed at drug-resistant fungal pathogens, according to NIH Reporter. The award, running through mid-2027, funds preclinical work on compounds designed to restore or enhance the potency of existing antifungal drugs rather than act as standalone therapies.
The company's lead platform, termed Potentiators of Antimicrobial Susceptibility (PAMS), targets the pantothenate-coenzyme A biosynthesis pathway, a metabolic route not addressed by current antifungal classes such as azoles, polyenes and echinocandins. PAMS compounds reportedly show no antifungal activity alone but are said to boost the efficacy of approved drugs when used in combination, including against Candida auris, Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus. Under the award, principal investigator Jae-Yeon Choi will screen 23 PAMS candidates for combination activity, followed by cytotoxicity and pharmacokinetic profiling, with in vivo mouse efficacy studies for the top pairings.
The funding reflects continued interest at NIAID in adjuvant-based strategies to counter rising antifungal resistance, an area where treatment options remain far more limited than for bacterial infections. The CDC has flagged multidrug-resistant C. auris as an urgent threat and azole-resistant Aspergillus as emerging, underscoring the clinical gap Curatix is targeting; unlike efforts to develop new antifungal scaffolds outright, the company's combination approach seeks to extend the utility of already-approved drugs, potentially offering a faster and less costly path toward addressing resistant invasive fungal infections if the preclinical data hold up in later-stage testing.
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