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Canadians could soon lose access to a unique public collection of fungi that scientists say is crucial for important research, such as developing new drugs to treat antibiotic-resistant pathogens and treatments for fungal diseases emerging in a warmer climate.
The public biobank at the University of Toronto’s UAMH Center for Global Microfungal Biodiversity is a “treasure trove” of 12,000 fungal species collected since 1933, says James Scott, professor at U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and director of the center.
“We are really the only one in Canada using mold,” he said, adding that it is used by Canadian researchers from industry, public health laboratories and colleges and universities.
It is also billed as the largest collection of disease-causing fungi in the Western Hemisphere, providing scientists in Canada with a precious opportunity to research those diseases and their treatments.
But the funding has run out.
Unless a government or other funder intervenes, the collection will likely be sent abroad. If that happens, access to it will be much more expensive and require a lot of paperwork, Scott predicts.
“In some cases it may not be possible,” he said, especially with some disease-causing fungi or specimens native to certain countries.
Last week, Scott wrote a letter to Vic Fedeli, Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development, describing the “dire situation” facing the center, noting that Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently announced a $143 million investment in a life sciences strategy for Ontario.
“Securing the future of this biorepository, already recognized as a leading reference library of living microfungi, would be an easy win for Premier Ford’s life sciences initiative,” Scott wrote.
He hadn’t heard anything by Wednesday.
Thousands of unique finds
The collection contains thousands of fungal species from more than 3,200 species – including some that have likely never been described by science – collected over nearly a century. They are in small vials, freeze-dried or stored in tanks of nitrogen vapor or under water or mineral oil, waiting to be brought back to life when necessary.
About two-thirds of the strains in the Canadian fungal library are unique to this collection and are not found in any other fungal repository in the world, Scott said.
Half of the specimens come from Canada and represent ecosystems ranging from Pelee Island to the High Arctic.
Mary Berbee, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia who uses the collection, noted that unlike most plants and animals, fungi “live their entire lives hidden,” such as underground or inside another organism.
They only appear (for example as mushrooms or molds) when they do something important, such as causing disease or reproducing.
“But if you miss that opportunity, you may never get it again,” Berbee said. “You can have great difficulty finding the same organism.”
Her own research focuses on mycorrhizal fungi, which are associated with the roots of plants and have a mutually beneficial relationship by exchanging nutrients with those plants. She deposits new specimens she finds in the fungus repository for others to study, including new species.
“I suspect there are many more fungi, new to science, that are in the collection that will be discovered,” she said.
Largest collection of disease-causing fungi
The collection also contains more fungi that cause disease in humans and animals than any other in the Western Hemisphere, Scott said.
“We have a complete representation of all the serious fungal pathogens in humans and animals that we know of,” he said, adding that it is also the largest collection of fungal pathogens affecting reptiles, marine corals and bats, whose populations are currently being decimated. due to a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome.
Berbee noted that climate change means many fungal diseases are creeping north, such as the deadly Valley Fever, which is most common in California and Arizona but is now showing up in northern Oregon and Washington state.
A deadly fungus known to cause a potentially fatal disease called Valley Fever lurks in the soil of the southwestern US. It is not yet in Canada, but is moving north thanks to climate change.
Scott said it’s not just about human diseases.
“We are definitely seeing a climate change-driven increase in certain diseases that will wipe out populations of certain animals,” he said. “And you know, a lot of those diseases are fungal diseases. They’re probably the most important emerging diseases.”
A source of possible cures?
Scott often said the key to figuring out which treatment works is expanding the disease-causing species “and trying to understand how it lives and works. If you don’t have the thing, you can’t do that.”
He said the biobank is where researchers would go to get the right strain.
Berbee said it wouldn’t be easy for Canadian researchers if the collection moved abroad. Because they can cause disease, she said, “there is strict control over the movement of cultures.” It can take months to obtain permits.
Scott said that in some cases it may not be possible at all – as has been the case for strains of other types of pathogens, such as anthrax, that have required Canadian researchers from the US.
Ayush Kumar is a professor of microbiology at the University of Manitoba and uses the fungal collection in his search for new drugs to treat diseases.
He said antibiotic resistance is a growing problem. His lab has screened some fungi in the biobank to see if they produce antibiotics.
“Fungi have probably been the main source of antibiotics,” he said, including the first: penicillin.
Kumar has promising preliminary data on one fungus that may be counteracting Acetinobacter baumanii bacteria that are resistant to virtually every class of antibiotics currently in use.
He worries that the fungi will be difficult to access due to safety regulations if they move to Europe or Asia.
“It would be a great loss,” he said.
Potential future for the biobank
Scott has already saved the collection once. It was originally housed at the University of Alberta – UAMH stands for University of Alberta Microfungus Collection and Herbarium – and was maintained with a federal grant from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
But the funding program ended in 2012 under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who cut many scientific research and monitoring programs and facilities during his time in office.
Scott said he was contacted by the collection’s curator, who said if he didn’t take the collection, it was destined for the trash.
“You can’t replace that if it ends up in the dumpster,” he said. He took the collection to the University of Toronto, hoping he could find another source of funding.
Since then, he says, several subsidy applications have been rejected. He even created a board game called Mycology to raise money for the biobank.
User fees cover about one-fifth of the $130,000 per year needed to operate the biobank. Scott has been donating $100,000 a year from his private company to make up the difference, but said that is no longer feasible.
If he doesn’t find a solution in the coming year, he said the collection will likely be included in a warehouse in the Netherlands that is one of the largest in the world or the State Key Laboratory in Beijing, China.
“We’ve now reached a point where it just doesn’t seem possible to maintain this biobank in Canada,” Scott said.
