A previously described method was used for this purpose.[18-20] Briefly, Candida cells maintained on Sabouraud’s dextrose agar were inoculated onto fresh plates and incubated overnight at 37 °C for 24 h prior to use. The organisms were harvested and a cell suspension prepared in sterile PBS at 520 nm to an optical density of 1.5. From this cell suspension, 0.5 ml was added to tubes containing 2 ml of RPMI (control) and 2 ml of RPMI/drug (test), in which the drug concentrations were three times the MIC values. This

gave a cell suspension of 106 cells ml−1 in each assay tube. The tubes were then incubated at 37°C for a period of 30 min. Following this limited exposure, the Selleck MK2206 drugs were removed by two cycles of dilution with sterile PBS and centrifugation for 10 min at 3000 g. Afterwards, the supernatant was completely decanted and the pellets were re-suspended in 10 ml of sterile PBS. This procedure has been used previously for drug removal and has shown to reduce the concentration of the drug as much as 10 000-fold, thereby minimising any carry-over effect of the drug following its removal.[18-20] Viable counts of the control and the test

were performed after drug removal. As the procedure of drug removal effectively eliminated Selleckchem AZD6738 any carry-over effect, there was virtually no difference on the viable counts of the control and the tests following exposure to already diluted subtherapeutic concentrations of the drug as observed in previous studies.[18-20] Following drug removal, to determine the growth suppression and subsequent Liothyronine Sodium recovery of fungal growth, namely the PAFE, the growth was determined by a previously described optical density method with slight modification using the equation PAFE = T-C.[18-20] T = time required for optical density of the drug-exposed cell suspension to reach the

selected relative optical density of 0.05 value at 520 nm. C = time required for optical density of the drug-free control cell suspension to reach the selected relative optical density value at 520 nm. Thus, T-C expresses the time in which the antifungal agent was capable of causing growth suppression of the organism following limited exposure to the drug (i.e. PAFE). As done in previous studies, for this purpose, 1600 μl of cell suspension was incubated with 2.4 mL of RPMI 1640 at 37°C and the optical density of the suspension was measured at frequent intervals (i.e. 15 min) for 5 h, by which time, both the controls and tests reached the selected relative optical density value, enabling to calculate the PAFE. A previously used adhesion assay was performed with slight modifications.[19, 20] Briefly, human BEC from four adults was collected by gently rubbing the inner aspect of the right and left buccal mucosa with sterile cotton swabs. These were then dispersed in sterile PBS.