The impact of invasive fungal infections on human health is a serious, but largely overlooked, public health issue. Commonly affecting the immunocompromised community, fungal infections are predominantly caused by species of Candida, Cryptococcus, and Aspergillus. Treatments are reliant on the aggressive use of pre-existing antifungal drug classes that target the fungal cell wall and membrane. Despite their frequent use, these drugs are subject to unfavorable drug-drug interactions, can cause undesirable side-effects and have compromised efficacy due to the emergence of antifungal resistance. Hence, there is a clear need to develop novel classes of antifungal drugs. A promising approach involves exploiting the metabolic needs of fungi by targeted interruption of essential metabolic pathways. This review highlights potential antifungal targets including enolase, a component of the enolase-plasminogen complex, and enzymes from the mannitol biosynthesis and purine nucleotide biosynthesis pathways. There has been increased interest in the enzymes that comprise these particular pathways and further investigation into their merits as antifungal targets and roles in fungal survival and virulence are warranted. Disruption of these vital processes by targeting unconventional pathways with small molecules or antibodies may serve as a promising approach to discovering novel classes of antifungals.

侵袭性真菌感染对人类健康的影响是一个严重的但在很大程度上被忽视的公共健康问题。通常影响免疫功能低下的社区，真菌感染主要是由以下物种引起的：念珠菌，隐球菌和 曲霉。治疗依赖于积极使用针对真菌细胞壁和细胞膜的现有抗真菌药物。尽管它们经常使用，但是由于抗真菌抗性的出现，这些药物会受到不利的药物-药物相互作用，会引起不良的副作用，并损害疗效。因此，显然需要开发新型的抗真菌药。一种有前途的方法涉及通过有针对性地中断必需的代谢途径来开发真菌的代谢需要。这篇综述重点介绍了潜在的抗真菌靶标，包括烯醇酶，烯醇酶-纤溶酶原复合物的成分，以及来自甘露醇生物合成和嘌呤核苷酸生物合成途径的酶。人们对包含这些特定途径的酶的兴趣日益增加，因此有必要进一步研究其作为抗真菌靶标以及在真菌存活和致病性中的作用的优点。通过用小分子或抗体靶向非常规途径破坏这些重要过程可能是发现新型抗真菌剂的一种有前途的方法。