Caenorhabditis elegans-BasedAspergillus fumigatusInfection Model for Evaluating Pathogenicity and Drug Efficacy

Aspergillus fumigatusis the most reported causative pathogen associated with the increasing global incidences of aspergilloses, with the health of immunocompromised individuals mostly at risk. Monitoring the pathogenicity ofA. fumigatusstrains to identify virulence factors and evaluating the efficacy of potent active agents against this fungus in animal models are indispensable in current research effort.Caenorhabditis eleganshas been successfully utilized as an infection model for bacterial and dimorphic fungal pathogens because of the advantages of being time-efficient, and less costly. However, application of this model to the filamentous fungusA. fumigatusis less investigated. In this study, we developed and optimized a stable and reliableC. elegansmodel forA. fumigatusinfection, and demonstrated the infection process with a fluorescent strain. Virulence results of several mutant strains in our nematode model demonstrated high consistency with the already reported pathogenicity pattern in other models. Furthermore, thisC. elegans-A. fumigatusinfection model was optimized for evaluating the efficacy of current antifungal drugs. Interestingly, the azole drugs in nematode model prevented conidial germination to a higher extent than amphotericin B. Overall, our establishedC. elegansinfection model forA. fumigatushas potential applications in pathogenicity evaluation, antifungal agents screening, drug efficacy evaluation as well as host-pathogen interaction studies.