The goal of the proposed research is to provide a novel class of antifungal agents against pathogenic fungi that are threatening the global crop production in agriculture. Current fungicides used in agriculture have encountered serious problems from the emerging resistance of the pathogenic fungi. The progress for the development and discovery of new antifungal agents is relatively thwarted as compared to the development of antibacterial, antiviral and anticancer agents. Additionally, the newly developed fungicides used in agriculture are often the same class of fungicides as those used in human which could lead to the dispersion of resistance from plants to human and creating more problems in the future. In light of the urgency and deficiency in the research of fungicide, we intend to develop a novel class of antifungal agent. This novel class of antifungal agent is basing on a prominent lead. Furthermore, we intend to optimize it into compounds that do not resemble the clinically used antibiotics while still maintaining their antifungal activity against pathogenic plant fungi. The proposed research will have significant impacts in areas directly related to agriculture.

We have completed an initial evaluation of various kanamycin class aminoglycosides including amikacin, gentamicin, kanamycin, JL040 and JL038 (the last two belong to our synthetic kanamycin class aminoglycosides). Very promising antifungal activity was observed, especially for JL040 against Fusarium graminearum. The antifungal activity of JL040 is even better than that of the commercially available neomycin, ribostamycin, kanamycin, amikacin and gentamicin. More detailed study has been initiated.

Disk Assay of Kanamycin Class Aminoglycosides against Fusarium graminearum

(More details is under construction)