Inhibition of the Calcineurin Pathway by Two Flavonoids Isolated from Finet & Gagnep.

In order to discover plant-derived signaling pathway inhibitors with antifungal properties, a two-component screening system utilizing the calcineurin and Hog1 mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways responsible for the virulence networks of was employed, owing to the counter-regulatory actions of these pathways. Of the 1,000 plant extracts tested, two bioactive compounds from were found to act specifically on the calcineurin pathway of . These compounds, identified as pashanone and 5-hydroxy-6,7-dimethoxyflavanone, exhibited potent antifungal activities against various human pathogenic fungi with minimum inhibitory concentration values ranging from 4.0 to >128 μg/ml.