CaFeO powder antifungal activity to the Candida utilis culture upon its growth.

This study reports the impact of CaFeO porous powder on the yeast Candida utilis-as a fungal model-at different phases of growth, i.e., early exponential (6 h), mid-log (11 h), and stationary (17 h) phases. CaFeO inhibited the cell growth in a time-dependent manner. After 120 min incubation, the fungicidal activity of porous powder was observed, i.e., log reduction of 2.81 and 2.58 for 11 and 17 h cultures, respectively, reaching the maximum of 4 log reduction after 7 days. Nevertheless, the 6 h culture of C. utilis showed enhanced resistance to CaFeO with a ≤ 0.4 log reduction during the 7 days exposure. Our results not only showed that CaFeO has the potential to effectively eliminate the C. utilis cell growth but also indicated the importance of the yeast culture physiological state for resistance to CaFeO. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that evaluated the fungicidal activity of CaFeO porous powder on C. utilis and the impact of the C. utilis phase of growth on the cell susceptibility.