The Role and Operating System of Korean Collection of Medical Fungi (KCMF)

Kim, Young Kwon

Abstract

In general, fungi including yeast and filamentous form, locate in soil, water, plant, animal and human. Fungi can be survived almost in every environmental conditions and be useful or harmful for humans. Some human pathogenic fungi may infection immunocompromised peoples and/or susceptible hosts causing hypersensitivity disease, mycotoxicoses, which can be induced by mycotoxins, and mycoses. Mycoses are classified into four classes, such as superficial and/or cutaneous mycoses, subcutaneous mycoses, opportunistic mycoses, and systemic or deep seated mycoses. Recently, due to the increasement of immune system defective patients which are usually caused by HIV infection, transplant and cancer, opportunistic systemic fungal infection has been dramatically elevated. Fast diagnose system and early antifungal treatments are required because the morbidity and mortality of these systemic infections are very high. Although these opportunistic infections caused by mainly Candida, Aspergillus and Cryptococcus spp. are getting higher, no culture collection and/or strain bank for the infectious fungal strains are operated in Korea. These situations allows us to establish a novel Korean collection of medical fungi (KCMF) for their genetic materials. KCMF will be a hub for human pathogenic fungal strains isolated in Korea and will serve to studies of clinical and basic mycological research as well as to maintain various mutants and varieties which could be useful for develop new antifungal agents and drug discovery. The successful Korean Collection of Medical Fungi (KCMF) will contribute to; 1. Create informative world-wide culture collection of clinically isolated fungal strains. 2. Obtain various medical mycological materials as well as antifungal agent resistant strains for studying fungi-related topics including novel antifungal agents. 3. Create world-wide network for the researchers who study medical mycology and provide workshop and various information for the fungal community. The purpose of establish a novel Korean collection of medical fungi(KCMF) is to isolate, classify, and collect human pathogenic fungal strains, isolated from human clinical specimens from superficial and systemic infections. Furthermore, maintaining a culture collection for Korean specific clinical isolates and resistant strains of antifungal agents.