Amphotericin B (AmB) is a well known antifungal and antiprotozoal antibiotic used in the clinic for several decades. Clinicalapplications of AmB, however, are limited by its nephrotoxicity and many other acute side effects which are not acceptable by patientswhen their life is not threaten. In order to improve the therapeutic index of this drug, lipid formulations have been introduced and manyefforts have been made to obtain less toxic AmB derivatives by chemical modifications of the parent drug. This review presents conciseknowledge about this fascinating compound and a critical review of the data published within last few years about the mechanism of actionof this antibiotic. In particular, in the present work we discuss: i) structure and properties of AmB and its recently synthesized newderivatives; ii) antifungal and antileishmanial activity and toxicity of these compounds; and iii) mode of action of AmB and its derivativesat cellular and molecular levels, with particular attention paid to interactions of AmB and different components of cellular membranes.
Authors
Additional information
- Category
- Publikacja w czasopiśmie
- Type
- artykuł w czasopiśmie wyróżnionym w JCR
- Language
- angielski
- Publication year
- 2009
