Intranasal Fungal Infection Model in Mice

Survival studies were conducted as previously described (31 (link)). Briefly, 6-week-old CD-1 female mice (Charles River) were immunosuppressed with 40 mg/kg triamcinolone acetonide (Kenalog, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ, USA), administered via subcutaneous injection on day –1 relative to infection. Mice were infected intranasally with 5 × 10⁶ conidia suspended in 30 µL sterile injectable water. The sham group was inoculated with sterile injectable water alone. Survival was monitored for 14 days following infection. Statistics were performed using the log-rank test on GraphPad Prism 9. Group size was equal to 10 mice per group. To histologically assess tissue invasion, mice were immunosuppressed and infected as described above. Mice were sacrificed on day +4 and lungs were harvested and fixed in 10% buffered formalin. Fixed lung samples were paraffin-embedded, sectioned, and mounted for staining using Grocott’s methenamine silver stain (HistoWiz).