In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of fungal diseases. This is due to a wide spectrum of action, immunosuppressants and other group drugs. In terms of frequency, rapid spread and globality, fungal infections are approaching acute respiratory infections. Antimycotics are medicinal substances endorsed with fungicidal or fungistatic properties. For the treatment of fungal diseases, several groups of compounds are used that differ in their origin (natural or synthetic), molecular targets and mechanism of action, antifungal effect (fungicidal or fungistatic), indications for use (local or systemic infections), and methods of administration (parenteral, oral, outdoor). Several efforts have been made by various medicinal chemists around the world for the development of antifungal drugs with high efficacy with the least toxicity and maximum selectivity in the area of antifungal chemotherapy. The pharmacokinetic properties of the new antimycotics are also important: the ability to penetrate biological barriers, be absorbed and distributed in tissues and organs, get accumulated in tissues affected by micromycetes, undergo drug metabolism in the intestinal microflora and human organs, and in the kinetics of excretion from the body. There are several ways to search for new effective antimycotics: - Obtaining new derivatives of the already used classes of antimycotics with improved activity properties. - Screening of new chemical classes of synthetic antimycotic compounds. - Screening of natural compounds. - Identification of new unique molecular targets in the fungal cell. - Development of new compositions and dosage forms with effective delivery vehicles. The methods of informatics, bioinformatics, genomics and proteomics were extensively investigated for the development of new antimycotics. These techniques were employed in finding and identification of new molecular proteins in a fungal cell; in the determination of the selectivity of drugprotein interactions, evaluation of drug-drug interactions and synergism of drugs; determination of the structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies; determination of the molecular design of the most active, selective and safer drugs for the humans, animals and plants. In medical applications, the methods of information analysis and pharmacogenomics allow taking into account the individual phenotype of the patient, the level of expression of the targets of antifungal drugs when choosing antifungal agents and their dosage. This review article incorporates some of the most significant studies covering the basic structures and approaches for the synthesis of antifungal drugs and the directions for their further development.

Releasing multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) into ecosystems affects the biofilm formation and metabolic activity of bacteria in aquatic and soil environments. Pristine (pMWCNTs), oleophilic (oMWCNTs), hydrophilic (hMWCNTs), and carboxylated (cMWCNTs) carbon nanotubes were used to investigate their effects on bacterial biofilm. A pronounced probiofilm effect of modified MWCNTs was observed on the Gram-negative bacteria of Pseudomonas fluorescens C2, Acinetobacter guillouiae 11 h, and Alcaligenes faecalis 2. None of the studied nanomaterials resulted in the complete inhibition of biofilm formation. The complete eradication of biofilms exposed to MWCNTs was not observed. The functionalization of carbon nanotubes was shown to change their probiofilm and antibiofilm effects. Gram-negative bacteria were the most susceptible to destruction, and among the modified MWCNTs, oMWCNTs had the greatest effect on biofilm destruction. The number of living cells in the biofilms was assessed by the reduction of XTT, and metabolic activity was assessed by the reduction of resazurin to fluorescent resorufin. The biofilms formed in the presence of MWCNTs reduced tetrozolium to formazan more actively than the control biofilms. When mature biofilms were exposed to MWCNTs, dehydrogenase activity decreased in Rhodococcus erythropolis 4-1, A. guillouiae 11 h, and A. faecalis 2 in the presence of pMWCNTs and hMWCNTs, as well as in A. guillouiae 11 h exposed to cMWCNTs. When mature biofilms were exposed to pMWCNTs, hMWCNTs, and cMWCNTs, the metabolism of cells decreased in most strains, and oMWCNTs did not have a pronounced inhibitory effect. The antibiofilm and probiofilm effects of MWCNTs were strain-dependent.

The capabilities of atmospheric-pressure gas-discharge plasma and plasma-solution systems as applied to enhancement of industrial processes in solutions, such as flax bleaching and wood delignification, were analyzed. It was shown that the set of active species generated in the plasma systems corresponds to that required for the processes in question. According to estimates, the efficiency of plasma-solution systems is higher than that of cold atmospheric-pressure plasma. A kinetic scheme for the bleaching processes activated in the plasma-solution systems is discussed.

The basic physical, physicochemical, and chemical processes occurring in the plasma-solution systems are considered. Data on correlation between the emission intensity of electrolyte-cathode glow discharge and the rate of nonequilibrium discharge-induced vaporization of the solution are presented. A mechanism for the appearance of the atomic emission threshold of metal atoms in the plasma zone is proposed. The role of chemically active species generated by ion bombardment in chemical processes occurring in solutions is shown.

Firing of atmospheric-pressure, electrolytic-cathode glow discharge leads to an effect that is similar to well-known cathode sputtering. This process can be called nonequilibrium vaporization of the solution. Unlike quasi-equilibrium vaporization, the nonequilibrium process entails the transfer of nonvolatile components of the solution to the gas phase. Previously, studying glow discharge with calcium and barium chloride solutions as the cathode, we have shown that the transfer of cations and anions via the nonequilibrium vaporization of the nonvolatile solutes is not necessarily stoichiometric [1].