Brian M. Peters, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Science in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) has been awarded $418,000 to continue his research repurposing compounds to fight against inflammation that results from vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) -- commonly referred to as a yeast infection. VVC is among the most prevalent fungal infections found in humans -- 75 percent of women suffer from this condition at least once in their lifetime.
"Current therapies for VVC are focused mostly on antifungal administration, which for the most part, is fairly effective," Peters said. "But there is a subset of women (five to eight percent) who have recurrent disease and have to maintain that antifungal therapy throughout their lives, or they will continue getting symptoms over and over again."
Peters and his team are attempting to develop a potential way to treat VVC by repurposing FDA-approved compounds found in common therapies used to treat other diseases, such as type-2 diabetes. This new potential inflammation therapy would be used as a co-therapeutic to common antifungal therapies.