Adhesins in Candida glabrata

The human fungal pathogen is causing more and more problems in hospitals, as this species shows an intrinsic antifungal drug resistance or rapidly becomes resistant when challenged with antifungals. only grows in the yeast form, so it is lacking a yeast-to-hyphae switch, which is one of the main virulence factors of . An important virulence factor of is its capacity to strongly adhere to many different substrates. To achieve this, expresses a large number of adhesin-encoding genes and genome comparisons with closely related species, including the non-pathogenic , which revealed a correlation between the number of adhesin-encoding genes and pathogenicity. The adhesins are involved in the first steps during an infection; they are the first point of contact with the host. For several of these adhesins, their importance in adherence to different substrates and subsequent biofilm formation was demonstrated in vitro or in vivo. In this review, we provide an overview of the role of adhesins during adhesion and biofilm formation both, under in vitro and in vivo conditions.