Background: The incidence of candidiasis caused by non-albicans Candida (NAC) species is increasing. Candida tropicalis has emerged as one of the most important NAC species. This study aims to examine the antifungal susceptibility profile and some virulence factors of C. tropicalis isolated from various clinical specimens. Methods: A total of 71 C. tropicalis isolates from various clinical specimens (69.01%, 18.31%, 9.86%, and 2.82% of isolates were collected from urine, respiratory samples, blood, and skin and soft tissue infections, respectively) from ICU patients in Alexandria, Egypt. The isolates were identified at species level by CHROMagar Candida and VITEK 2 compact system. Furthermore, the antifungal susceptibility was determined using the VITEK 2 system AST-YS07 card containing different antifungals. Hemolysin, phospholipase, and proteinase activity and biofilm formation were also tested as virulence factors. Results: Only 30 isolates (42.25%) were non-susceptible (MIC ≥ 4 µg/mL) to fluconazole, of which 28 isolates showed non-susceptibility (MIC ≥ 0.25 µg/mL) to voriconazole. All isolates showed both hemolysin and proteinase activities, while only 9 isolates (12.68%) showed phospholipase production and 70 isolates (98.59%) demonstrated biofilm formation. Strong biofilm production was observed among the blood culture isolates (85.71%), followed by the respiratory and urinary isolates (61.54% and 46.94%, respectively). Conclusions: This study sought to provide useful data on the antifungal susceptibility of C. tropicalis isolates from ICU patients suffering from invasive infections with an increased trend towards elevated MICs levels of both fluconazole and voriconazole. Due to the high incidence of systemic candidiasis and antifungal resistance, C. tropicalis is emerging as a serious root of infections. Therefore, early and accurate identification of Candida species along with susceptibility testing is of utmost importance.

Background: Candida tropicalis is a human pathogenic yeast frequently isolated in Latin America and Asian-Pacific regions, although recent studies showed that it is also becoming increasingly widespread throughout several African and south-European countries. Nevertheless, relatively little is known about its global patterns of genetic variation as most of existing multilocus sequence typing (MLST) data come from Asia and there are no genotyped African isolates. Objectives:We report detailed genotyping data from a large set of C. tropicalis isolates recovered from different clinical sources in Italy, Egypt and Cameroon in order to expand the allele/genotype library of MLST database (https://pubml st.org/ctrop icalis), and to explore the genetic diversity in this species.Methods: A total of 103 C. tropicalis isolates were genotyped using the MLST scheme developed for this species. All isolates were also tested for in vitro susceptibility to various antifungals to assess whether certain genotypes were associated with drug-resistance.

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Breast cancer resembles the second-highest incidence rate of cancers worldwide with highly remarkable incidence and mortality rates. Recently, the main target behind the current study is to reduce the toxicity along with targeted delivery of different drugs separately and simultaneously to enhance the treatment options for breast cancer. A promising strategy for overcoming poor drug delivery is to recruit the evacuated bacterial cells which are known as Bacterial Ghosts (BGs) for drug delivery. The present study focused on formulating a new complex delivery system using a highly purified and safety-confirmed BGs of Salmonella Typhimurium ATCC 1403 strain loaded with class II HDACI (Belinostat) associated with nano-emulsion droplets of constant and non-toxic natural compound (Betaine), a glycine with three additional methyl groups. The formulated new complex delivery system of BGs was tested on two breast cancer cell lines, ER-positive ZR-75-1 and TNBC, MDA-MB-231 respectively. Using WST-1 proliferation assay, our data reports a combination index (CI) <1 indicating synergistic effect between Betaine nano-emulsion at low concentrations with Poly dispersity index less than 0.5 and BGs loaded with Belinostat per constant count of BGs CFU/ml. In comparison with treatment of either Betaine or Belinostat alone, the viability inhibition and apoptosis induction of both tested MDA-MB-231 and ZR-75-1 cells were amplified in the combined treatment of 72 hours. Furthermore, the achieved delivery showed a significant downregulated expression of angiogenesis-related markers such as VEGF and TSP-1 at concentrations of 1-mM Betaine nano-emulsion and 0.2-µM Belinostat after 24 hours of treatment. In conclusion, the proposed study introduced a new formulated delivery system of BGs with synergistic mechanistic effect of two different anti-cancer compounds as a promising strategy to inhibit breast cancer cell lines proliferation and angiogenesis. Citation Format: Sara H. Deghedy, Hoda E. Mahmoud, Ahmed A. Hussein, Mohammed A. El-Kholy, Passent M. Gaafar, Mai M. Ali, Ahmed S. Sultan. Synergistic effect of bacterial ghosts loaded with belinostat and betaine nano-emulsion: A potential treatment strategy for breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 834.

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