ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Biofilms
Synergistic Effects of Dioscin and Amphotericin B against Candida albicans: A Promising Strategy for Antifungal Therapy
Provisionally accepted
- Jilin University, Changchun, Hebei Province, China
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The emerging antifungal resistance exacts deteriorating effects on the shortage of drugs in dealing with fungal infections, calling for novel therapies. Although amphotericin B (AmB) is effective clinically and is rare in causing resistance, its severe side effects are warranted to be further decreased. Enhancing or potentiating AmB efficacy with other agents to lower the dose of AmB is appealing to decrease AmB toxicity. Dioscin, a steroidal saponin from Dioscore genus, has shown multiple pharmacological activities including anticancer, antifungal, hepatoprotective and nephroprotective activities. As combinational therapy has multiple advantages, it is interesting to explore the effects of dioscin and AmB combination in C. albicans, which is the most common fungal pathogen in human. In this study, through checkerboard assay, we found that dioscin and AmB producedhas synergistic effects in inhibiting the planktonic growth and biofilm formation of C. albicans (SC5314), Candida krusei and Candida tropicalis at 24 h. Dioscin (1 μg/mL) and AmB (0.625 μg/mL) synergistically inhibited the biofilm formation (97%) and development (60%) of C. albicans (SC5314), significantly superior to either agent alone (p<0.01). Time-killing assay also revealed that the combination of dioscin (1 μg/mL) and AmB (0.625 μg/mL) could greatly enhance the killing efficacy, compared to either agent alone. The hyphal formation and adhesion to abiotic surfaces of C. albicans could also be suppressed by this combination. The damages to cell membrane caused by this combination were revealed by cell membrane integrity assay and cell membrane potential assay using fluorescent dyes. Cell membrane damages were also further confirmed by results from transmission electron microscope and scanning electron microscope. Overall, our results suggested that the synergistic combination of dioscin and AmB causes cell membrane damages and holds great potential in the future development as anti-Candida therapies.
Keywords: Candida albicans, dioscin, Amphotericin B (AmB), Antifungal, Synergy, Virulence Factors
Received: 22 Oct 2025; Accepted: 05 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Xu, Zhang, Zhong and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lili Zhong
Longfei Yang
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