About
Institut Pasteur FungiBank is a multi-locus database on pathogenic fungi of medical interest identified at the French National Reference Center for Invasive Mycoses and Antifungals. Reliable identification of clinical isolates is a key factor for the efficient management of patients with invasive fungal infections, especially when rare species are involved. In the absence of prior exposure to antifungal drugs, a reliable identification can even allow prediction of the antifungal susceptibility profile of the isolate.
How to achieve a reliable identification? A key factor is a reliable database. Most of the public databases lack data on rare fungi, especially for filamentous fungi by lack of expertise in the field. It is therefore of utmost importance to blast the sequences with reliable databases cured by experts in the field of fungal taxonomy.
At the National Reference Center for Invasive Mycoses & Antifungals, identification of the isolates is made by a polyphasic approach (morphological features, carbon assimilation pattern when appropriate, antifungal susceptibility profile by the EUCAST method, and DNA sequencing of several loci ). Our collection currently includes more than 5000 isolates of yeasts corresponding to 27 genera and 81 species, and more than 1500 isolates of filamentous fungi corresponding to 77 genera and 257 species. The database is built using the BioloMICS software developed by Vincent Robert (BioAware SA). We also contribute to the data available in the ISHAM ITS database.
