A nonprofit for fungal research and open antifungal science.
For a world without antifungal resistance.
Fungal disease is linked to an estimated 3.8 million deaths a year, the drugs that fight it are failing, and almost no one is working on it. We research the biology of fungal disease and build open, rigorously validated science to keep antifungal medicines working.
Why fungi, why now
Fungal disease is rising, resistant, and overlooked.
A hidden global killer
Invasive fungal infections cause millions of deaths a year — often in people already fighting cancer, HIV, or ICU illness — yet they get a fraction of the attention bacteria do.
Resistance is spreading
Pathogens like the WHO critical-priority Candida auris now resist multiple antifungal classes at once and move through hospitals faster than we can respond.
The pipeline is nearly empty
Antifungal R&D is dramatically underfunded relative to antibacterial R&D. Few new drug classes are coming, and the ones we have are eroding.
What we do
Understand fungi. Build in the open. Hold every claim to proof.
Research the biology
Study how fungi cause disease and evade our drugs — starting with the enzymes and binding sites that antifungal resistance turns on.
Build open tools
Release reproducible, freely available software and data so any lab can build on the work, not just us.
Bring people together
Connect computational work with the wet labs, clinicians, and funders who can turn a hypothesis into a real treatment.
The science of resistance
Resistance is a story about geometry.
Scroll to see how an antifungal drug actually works — and what really separates a molecule that kills fungus from one that only looks like it should.
Follow the molecule
Meet the target
Deep inside a fungal cell sits CYP51 — an enzyme the fungus needs to survive. At its heart is an iron atom, held in a ring called a heme.
How we work
We hold our own work to proof before we ask anyone to trust it.
Computational biology produces hypotheses, not cures — and it is easy to publish a confident-looking result that means nothing. So we build the evidence in first: our tools must re-discover the drugs we already know work, on molecules they have never seen, before they are allowed to rank anything new. Every result, including the runs that fail, is written up in the open.
Our first project
OpenAFR — proving the method on Candida auris.
Our first open pipeline puts the approach to the test. On a held-out challenge frozen with a SHA-256 hash before any data was generated, it was asked to find 7 azole antifungals it had never seen, hidden among 348 look-alike decoys.
How closely a molecule brings a nitrogen to the heme iron discriminated real drugs from look-alikes far better than the docking program's own score — on the exact same poses. It's early, single-project evidence that the method works.
What it does not yet prove
- n = 7 held-out actives; the 95% confidence interval's lower bound still sits below the pass bar.
- Decoys are presumed inactive, not experimentally verified.
- One rigid receptor (C. albicans, not C. auris); no induced fit.
- This validates a ranking method, not a drug. A high rank is a hypothesis for a wet lab — never a hit.
Where we're headed
From a proven method to a shared platform for antifungal discovery.
Prove the method
DoneShip a self-validating pipeline whose ranking criterion passes a pre-registered, held-out test — with the failing runs published too.
Broaden the science
UnderwayExtend beyond one enzyme and one pathogen, and turn ranked candidates into clear, reproducible reports a collaborator can act on.
Partner with wet labs
Seeking partnersPut top candidates on real fungus. This is the critical dependency — nothing here is validated until someone does.
Open the platform
UnderwayGrow into shared, open infrastructure and data that any antifungal researcher can use — so progress compounds across the whole field.
Help us build a world without antifungal resistance.
Whether you run a wet lab, study fungal biology, fund neglected disease work, or want to contribute to open science — there's a place for you here. Let's talk.