Jul 6, 2026 · 47 min · 11 segments
Fungal pathogens are becoming an increasingly important challenge for infection prevention and control professionals. In this episode of The Infection Control Exchange Podcast, we explore emerging…
Wayne TuckerHost
But for today, we're going to focus on why are fungal pathogens gaining attention now.
So my thoughts are fungal pathogens, I guess, or how I discovered fungal pathogens, for example.
me, I used to joke, I said, Oh, I'm not interested in eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes are boring.
Eukaryotes suck.
And that's kind of a joke because we're eukaryotes.
Animals, fish, plants, and fungi.
Because I studied antibiotic-resisted bacteria and viruses.
I thought bacteria and viruses were fascinating.
They're such excellent, I want to say, forms of life.
Though some people say maybe viruses aren't alive.
But actually, I think it was maybe around 2019, 2018, around that time when we started learning about Candida Zima Oris.
And I think I might have learned a little bit more about it in the 2019 conference, but it was in Quebec.
Matthew Muller presented it.
And that was just...
When it came to my attention and perhaps the IPAC community at large, just like we knew that fungal pathogens could cause like serious diseases, morbidity, mortality, but in immune compromised people, we weren't really thinking of them as broader pathogens and the ones that could spread person to person and cause outbreaks.
And then on top of that was the antifungal resistance.
So I got more and more into that.
And actually, because I was one of the big science nerds in our IPAC department, I was...
It was either unidentified yeast or another rarer fungal species.
But for today, we're going to focus on why are fungal pathogens gaining attention now.
So my thoughts are fungal pathogens, I guess, or how I discovered fungal pathogens, for example.
me, I used to joke, I said, Oh, I'm not interested in eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes are boring.
Eukaryotes suck.
And that's kind of a joke because we're eukaryotes.
Animals, fish, plants, and fungi.
Because I studied antibiotic-resisted bacteria and viruses.
I thought bacteria and viruses were fascinating.
They're such excellent, I want to say, forms of life.
Though some people say maybe viruses aren't alive.
But actually, I think it was maybe around 2019, 2018, around that time when we started learning about Candida Zima Oris.
And I think I might have learned a little bit more about it in the 2019 conference, but it was in Quebec.
Matthew Muller presented it.
And that was just...
When it came to my attention and perhaps the IPAC community at large, just like we knew that fungal pathogens could cause like serious diseases, morbidity, mortality, but in immune compromised people, we weren't really thinking of them as broader pathogens and the ones that could spread person to person and cause outbreaks.
And then on top of that was the antifungal resistance.
So I got more and more into that.
And actually, because I was one of the big science nerds in our IPAC department, I was...
It was either unidentified yeast or another rarer fungal species.
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