CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Introduction: Combination therapy has emerged as an approach to improve the efficacy of antifungal drugs, considering that synergistic interactions can achieve higher antifungal effects with lower quantities of each substance, thus reducing lower toxic side-effects and higher spectrum of activity. Areas covered: Twenty four patents disclosed in the period 2000-2015 were covered in this review: twenty were devoted to pharmacodynamic potentiation, while four were dedicated to pharmacokinetic actions. Expert opinion: The common characteristic of most published patents is that the main partner is a commercial antifungal drug. In the most innovative combinations the second component was either a modifier of proton homeostasis, an antibody, an inhibitor of the adhesion of epithelial or endothelial cells or a keratinolitic agent that improve the skin penetration. The evaluation of synergism is always made with simple in vitro methods, which constitutes a weakness of the disclosed patents, due to the lack of in vivo studies, since the in vitro tests cannot predict the in vivo behavior. Also, it is surprising that none of the patents analyzes the toxicity of the new combinations, taking into account that one of the main objectives of the combinations is to reduce the toxicity of the existing antifungal drugs.