Talaromycosis (formerly penicilliosis) is a life-threatening invasive fungal infection caused by the dimorphic fungus Talaromyces marneffei (Tm) that is endemic in countries of Southeast Asia and is one of seven endemic mycoses of medical importance. Even with antifungal therapy, one in three patients dies because the diagnosis is often made too late for the antifungal drugs to work. Impediment to our progress is our reliance on decade-old culture-based diagnostic methods, which take up to 28 days for identification and are poorly sensitive.

OUCRU researcher team will work on two main objectives:

1. To validate a pipeline of novel pathogen-based diagnostics for talaromycosis that i) overcome many limitations of the current culture methods, ii) are in late stages of development, and iii) have the potential to be scaled up and commercialized for clinical and public health applications.
2. To determine the differential host transcriptional signatures that differentiate talaromycosis from other opportunistic infections.