Progress of detection and identification for pathogenic Candida species and its enlightenment to biomedical transformation

Abstract

The incidence of opportunistic fungal infection has been gradually increasing over recent years,especially the high morbidity and mortality of invasive Candida infections in immunocompromised individuals.With the emergence and increasing of rare species and drug-resistant strains, the accurate detection and identifica‐tion of pathogenic Candida species have been paid more and more attention in clinical practice. In addition to thetraditional direct microscopic examination and culture, the commercial identification methods developed depend‐ing on physiological characteristics also play an important role. Moreover, based on the development of molecularbiology theory and technology of Candida species, some methods for detecting and identifying pathogenic Candidaspecies have been generated, such as gene amplification and sequencing, real-time quantitative PCR, mNGS, andMALDI-TOF-MS. It should be noted that T2 Candida system has been approved for clinical diagnosis of candidemia,showing the intersection and integration of pathogenic mycology, medical imaging, and biomedical engineering.The progress in the detection and identification of pathogenic Candida species has important implications and putsforward new efforts for the research of pathogenic mycology and related transformation in China.

Keywords

• pathogenic candida species
• diagnosis
• identification
• phenotype
• molecular techniques