The New Approaches to Combat Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Conference is going to be held in Ascona Switzerland on 12-16 June 2022. This is a FEMS Sponsored meeting. 

Bacterial infections represent an urgent threat to human health worldwide. Over the past decades, pan-resistant strains of major bacterial pathogens have emerged rendering clinically available antibiotics ineffective. As a result, many achievements of modern medicine are now at risk. New ways to identify clinically effective antimicrobials are urgently needed to counter this threat. However, the current antimicrobial development pipeline is insufficient because of high attrition and limited coverage of multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria. Among the factors that impact the development of novel antibiotics, our limited understanding of the physiology and heterogeneity of bacterial pathogens in patients ranks highly. Bacteria growing in tissues of patients experience environments that are very different from standard laboratory conditions. Consequently, microbial physiology and population heterogeneity of such target populations greatly differs from bacteria cultures used for antibacterial discovery. Systematic strategies to tackle this fundamental problem are currently missing.

This conference bids to review the current knowledge on bacterial physiology in patients; outline the development of relevant in vitro models to study the underlying molecular mechanisms and provide an overview of novel intervention strategies.

Towards this goal, the meeting unites the world’s foremost scientists in the field of antimicrobial research to win the race against superbugs.