A laboratory-built sugar molecule has produced an early vaccine candidate against Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus that spreads in hospitals and long-term care facilities and currently lacks both a vaccine and a rapid test.
The molecule is a four-unit sugar chain that occurs naturally in the fungus's cell wall but is not present in humans, making it a usable target. In mice given an infection, animals immunized with the sugar linked to a carrier protein produced antibodies that specifically recognized it, and had lower fungal burden in the kidneys and spleen.
