Synthetic compounds for antifungal chemotherapy

Abstract

Systemic fungal infections are major problems in phytopathology and infections caused by fungal species and to treat this various antimicrobial agents have been applied clinically, which is known as antifungal chemotherapy. Amongst various natural antifungal drugs, few are currently used in clinical practice to treat essentially systemic fungal infections because of their low spectrum of activity, toxicity and immunosuppressive nature. These limitation open up a market for new synthetic antifungal drugs or structural modifications of inactive molecules, which will provide a broad spectrum of activity with less toxicity. In this chapter, synthetic compounds for antifungal chemotherapy including various derivatives of azole, fluoropyrimidine, thiocarbamate, allyamines, morpholine, carabrol ester and carboline along with their mechanism, broad spectrum of activity, advantages and limitations have been discussed.