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ON-DEMAND Beyond the pill: ...

This joint webinar was hosted by the AMR Declaration Trust and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA) ...

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Zero by 2023: One Health perspectives ...

Organised by the ISAC Viral Infections Working GroupThis webinar aims to raise awareness of various aspects related to rabies for ...

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Just published - ISAC / APUA Newsletter

Download the latest ISAC / APUA Newsletter which contains features articles, a round-up of the latest AMR news as well as ...

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The Antibiogram Training Project

ISAC is delighted to share this free training project to assist laboratories in developing and sharing hospital antibiograms.

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Membrane lipid remodelling confers ...

The on-demand recording of the latest ISAC Early Career Working Group webinar is now available.

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ISAC Project Grants

There is only one month to apply for an ISAC Project Grant. Applications invited from ISAC Member Societies for between &...

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Antibiotic allergy - a risk worth ...

In this lecture, Dr Trubiano presents on setting up an antibiotic allergy programme:

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Antibiotic summary cards

The Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA) and the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC) are proud to ...

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Fever in returning travellers ISAC ...

ISAC is pleased to announce the launch of a second free E-module which has been developed as part of a ...

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All ISAC webinars are free to attend and free to watch after the event.

Working Group Webinars

Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA)

antimicrobial resistance webinar LMICs

Beyond the pill: Transformative approaches to combat antimicrobial resistance

This joint webinar was hosted by the AMR Declaration Trust and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA) on 26 August 2023.

The aim of this webinar was to delve deep into the multifaceted issues surrounding antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Drawing from expertise across different regions and specialties, experts explored strategies ranging from grassroots implementation to high-level policy changes.

Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics

Viral respiratory tract infections (RTIs): superinfections

Superinfection of viral respiratory infection has been one of the hottest topics during the first waves of COVID-19: although it was rapidly demonstrated that coinfections were rare during the first days, fungal or bacterial superinfections was a major cause of death for intensive care unit patients on various immunosuppressive treatments (dexamethasone, IL6-inhibitors, etc.), who required prolonged mechanical ventilation. More recently, the burden of Group A streptococci superinfections have dramatically increased, in children and in adults, for reasons that still remain unclear.
ISAC and APUA invited three worldwide experts in the field of superinfections, to share with us the main features of these hot topics.

Group A streptococcal infections: insights from laboratory-based surveillance - Prof. Nina van Sorge
Fungal infections in the intensive care unit (ICU) - Prof. Anuradha Chowdhary
Gram negative superinfections - Prof. Alex Soriano
Moderator - Prof. Souha Kanj

Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics

The fight against antimicrobial resistance: a luta continua!

Expert speakers provided updates on the current AMR situation worldwide, with a particular focus on low- to middle- income countries (LMICs), and the efforts to fight it.

Chairs
Prof. Pierre Tattevin / Prof. Heiman Wertheim

  1. Estimating the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and how this evidence is informing new studies
    Dr Catrin Moore (UK)
  2. Potential use of C-Reactive Protein testing to optimise community use of antibiotics
    Dr Do Thi Thuy Nga (Vietnam)
  3. International Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Solutions (ICARS): Partnering for impact
    Dr Nandini Sreenivasan (Denmark)
  4. Antimicrobial resistance in Honiara, Solomon Islands
    Dr Bianca Graves (Australia)
  5. Prevalence and drivers of over-the-counter antibiotic sales among community drug outlets to develop mitigatory behaviour change interventions
    Dr Joseph Acolatse (Ghana)
  6. Optimised doses of polymyxins to improve outcomes for on-critically ill and critically ill patients with multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacterial infections
    Dr Puteri Zamri (Malaysia)

Anti-Infective Pharmacology Working Group

Insights of antimicrobial therapy in biofilm-associated infections: the clinical paradigm of prosthetic joint infections

Dr Jaime Lora-Tamayo (Hospital University 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain) presented an overview of biofilm-associated infections by using the specific problems of prosthetic joint infections as example. Dr Lora-Tamayo focussed on the antimicrobial treatment of these infections.

New Roles of beta-lactamase enzymes

The discovery of beta-lactamase encoding sequences in different organisms and also in humans and arthropods, has opened a new field of research of their roles, since these enzymes are multi-functional and have a very ancient evolution in kingdom of life. 
Jean-Marc Rolain (Editor, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, France) provided some examples of such discovery, including new roles of these enzymes in different fields.

Clinical Trials Targeting Antimicrobial Resistance

Antimicrobials have been a cornerstone of modern medicine. However, antimicrobial resistance is now one of the most urgent global health threats. To combat the increasing antimicrobial resistance, optimising the clinical use of current antibiotics and development of new antibiotics are critical and require robust clinical trials using pharmacokinetic/ pharmacodynamic/toxicodynamic principles.

In this ISAC online roundtable event, internationally leading clinicians and researchers reviewed the latest progress in clinical trials on antibiotics targeting antimicrobial resistance and discuss the challenges and opportunities.

Chairs
Jian Li / Jaime Lora-Tomayo

  1. Clinical trials of new antibiotics: Innovations and challenges
    David Paterson 
  2. Defining antibiotic treatment duration - experience from a multicentre randomised trial in Asia
    Mo-Yin
  3. Clinical trial networks to tackle AMR
    David Lye

Bone, Skin & Soft Tissue Infections Working Group

Hot topics on skin, bone and joint infections

Thank you for joining the webinar on Hot topics in skin, bone and joint infections on 24 March 2022.

The webinar covered a variety of interesting topics including mycobacterial peri-prosthetic joint infections, application of molecular assays in the diagnosis of septic arthritis, epidemiological data related to skin infections as well as timing for intravenous to oral switch in skin and soft tissue infections and antibiotic alternatives in some of these infections.

  1. Non tuberculosis mycobacteria and prosthetic joint infections
    Monica Chan
  2. Reactive Oxygen skin and soft tissue treatment
    Matthew Dryden
  3. The results of the Italian registry for SSTI, real life epidemiology and treatment of SSTI
    Pasquale Pagliano
  4. Detection of difficult to culture bacteria associated with bone and joint infections using real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
    Nusreen Ahmad-Saeed (UK)
  5. Criteria for early switch from IV to oral antibiotics in hospitalized patients with SSTI: a prospective study
    Parham Sendi

Early Career

Membrane lipid remodelling confers polymyxin resistance in Gram-negative bacteria Early Career Webinar

25 July 2023

The global threat from antibiotic resistance was highlighted in 2017 when the World Health Organization (WHO) published its first-ever priority pathogen list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Considered most in need of new treatment options were problematic Gram-negative bacteria (including Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae) which contain a unique double-membrane cell envelope that acts as a first-line defence mechanism against many antibiotics.

However, there is a lack of understanding of how bacteria modify their cell surface to resist antibiotics and how these modifications affect interactions with membrane-targeting antibiotics (e.g., the last-line polymyxin antibiotics).

These significant knowledge gaps severely limit the design of much-needed novel antibiotics targeting antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

This free webinar discussed the mechanism(s) underpinning the rapid and extensive membrane lipid remodelling and its relationship with polymyxin resistance in Gram-negative bacteria

Dr Meiling Han (Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University (Australia)

Dr Meiling Han is a group leader and an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA fellow at Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University (Australia). She completed her PhD in antimicrobial systems pharmacology at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science in 2018. Dr Han's research has been focused on the relationship between antimicrobial resistance and the remodelling of membrane lipids in Gram-negative bacteria.

Over the past 4 years, she has established an independent research programme to characterise the chemical compositions and biological functions of essential bacterial metabolome and lipidome using an integrative metabolomics/lpidomics and biophysical approach. Her research has resulted in productive research outputs as evidenced by 49 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals (e.g., Nat Commun, Nat Microbiol, Adv Sci).

Dr Wenyi Li (La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Australia)

Dr Wenyi Li is an NHMRC Investigator (Emerging Leadership Level 1) and Lecturer in Chemistry at the Department of Biochemistry and Chemistry, La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Dr Li is also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. His research projects mainly focus on the development of antimicrobials to combat nosocomial infections by using his chemical biology expertise and skillset.

By fostering an active collaborative research network, Dr Li has obtained several outstanding successful grants, including: 1 CIA NHMRC Investigator Emerging Leadership Level 1 grant and 1 CI NHMRC Ideas Grant.

Journey into the anti-infective field: academia, clinical and industry perspectives

The ISAC Early Career Working Group and Anti-infective Pharmacology Working Group organised the first International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC) and International Society of Anti-Infective Pharmacology (ISAP) joint Early Career webinar.

This webinar aimed to provide a platform for early career researchers (ECRs) to obtain career advice and to better understand the pressures impacting them and their career development.

Moderators:
Dr Jinxin Zhao (Monash University / ISAC Early Career Chair)
Dr Alina Nussbaumer-Pröll (Medical University of Vienna / ISAP Secretariat

Academic speaker - Prof. Sebastian Wicha (Hamburg University)
Clinical speaker - A/Prof. Thomas Tängdén (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Industry speaker - Dr Cuong Vuong (Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Belgium)

Introduction to adaptive clinical trial design

Adaptive designs can make clinical trials more flexible by utilising results accumulating in the trials to adjust the trials with respect to pre-specified rules. Adaptive design trials are often more efficient, informative and ethical than trials with a traditional fixed design since they often make better use of resources such as time and money and might require fewer participants.

Adaptive designs can be applied across all phases of clinical research, from early-phase dose escalation to confirmatory trials.

This talk introduced different types of adaptive designs, general principles and their key aspects. The focus is on the interpretation and reporting of results from adaptive designs through examples in literature.

This webinar is the second in the Working Group's series on "When Pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology meet infectious diseases".

Dr Amanda Wang (Speaker)
Dr Nusaibah Abdul Rahim (Moderator)

Antimicrobial Pharmacometrics: Mathematical Models for Antimicrobial Research and Development

In this talk, Dr Yu-Wei Lin introduced different antimicrobial pharmacometric techniques and highlighted the usefulness of pharmacometric analyses in antimicrobial research.

The world now faces an enormous and growing threat from the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to almost all current antibiotics. In this context, the field of pharmacometrics using mathematical models has, in recent years, emerged as an invaluable tool in academia, industry and regulatory agencies to facilitate the integration of preclinical and clinical data and to provide a scientifically based framework for designing and optimising dosing regimens.

In this talk, Dr Yu-Wei Lin will introduce different antimicrobial pharmacometric techniques and highlight the usefulness of pharmacometric analyses in antimicrobial research.

Dr Yu-Wei Lin (Speaker)
Dr Jinxin Zhao (Moderator)

ICU & Sepsis Working Group

Hot topics on infections in critical care

Infections represent a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the critical care setting, especially in our era of multidrug-resistant pathogens.

During the COVID19 pandemic, on the other hand, a significant increase in the prevalence of ICU infections has been reported. Prompt diagnosis of critical care infections and appropriate treatment in optimised doses, along with antibiotic stewardship, are of outmost importance for improved outcomes and tackling antimicrobial resistance development.

Chair
Despoina Koulenti

  1. Diagnosis and management of severe community-acquired pneumonia
    Antoni Torres
  2. Diagnosis and management of abdominal sepsis
    Jan De Waele
  3. Management of infections caused by MDR Gram-negative pathogens
    Patrick Harris
  4. Management of S.aureus bacteremia
    Stefan Hage
  5. Viral infections in the Intensive Care Unit
    Sotirios Tsiodras
  6. Role of biomarkers for sepsis diagnosis in critically ill patients
    Pedro Povoa
  7. Antibiotic de-escalation
    Liesbet De Bu
  8. Antibiotic stewardship (in COVID-19 era)
    Jeroen Schouten
  9. Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and antibiotic optimization in the Intensive Care Unit
    Hafiz Abdul-Aziz
  10. Host-targeted immunotherapies in the Intensive Care Unit
    Antoine Roquilly
  11. COVID-19 in haematological malignancies: outcome of infection and the effects of vaccination
    Evangelos Terpos
  12. Ventilator associated pneumonia in COVID-19 patients
    Andrew Conway Morris
  13. Management of severe COVID19 infection
    John Marshall 

MRSA Working Group

Regional & National MRSA Surveillance Programmes Worldwide

The webinar aimed to review national and regional surveillance programmes for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The first meeting included brief presentations from laboratories in several countries that undertake MRSA surveillance. This was  followed by a period of moderated discussion to assess best practices. The goals were to understand the variety of approaches to surveillance worldwide and to develop principles that may underlie future harmonization of surveillance methods.

Chairs
Margreet Vos / Valerie Baede  / Michael Z. David

Regional & National MRSA Surveillance Programs: results of a survey
Valerie Baede

Short laboratory presentations from the following speakers:

  1. Harald Seifert (University of Cologne, Germany)
  2. Anders Rhod Larsen (Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen)
  3. Guido Werner (Robert Koch Institute, Wernigerode)
  4. Leo Schouls (Centre for Infectious Disease Control Netherlands (CIb), National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the Netherlands)
  5. Joanna Empel (National Medicines Institute, Warsaw, Poland)
  6. Michael Borg (Mater Dei Hospital, Malta)
  7. Domnique Blanc (Lausanne University Hospital,, Switzerland)
  8. Boudewijn Catry (Sciensano, Belgium)
  9. Helena Žemličková (National Institute of Public Health, Czech republic)
  10. Aurélie Chabaud (Limoges University Hospital, France)
  11. Francois Vandenesch (National Reference Center for Staphylococc, France)

Rapid Diagnostics & Biomarkers Working Group

Rapid diagnostics & biomarkers at the heart of patient management

Rapid diagnostics & biomarkers at the heart of patient management

Provision of medicine is transforming due to the amount of research and development in novel diagnostics and technologies.

In this webinar, ISAC’s Rapid Diagnostics & Biomarkers Working Group provided a number of short presentations on how rapid and novel diagnostics and technologies and their application can impact clinical practice and the provision of microbiology, infectious disease, antimicrobial stewardship and infection control services.

Chair
Kordo Saeed (University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, UK)

  1. Role of PCT in COVID-19 Patients
    Eric Howard Gluck (Swedish Hospital, USA)
  2. Rapid pneumonia diagnostics in the molecular age: results from the SARIPOC trial
    Stephen Poole (Biomedical Research Centre, UK)
  3. Is proinflammatory biomarker ProADM helpful for risk stratification in COVID-19 patients?
    Philipp Schuetz (Kantonsspital Aarau, Switzerland)
  4. QiaSTAT and patient safety: experiences with a rapid PCR system
    Peter Laszlo Kanizsai (University of Pécs, Hungary)
  5. Rapid biomarkers in community setting to improve antibiotic use
    Heiman Wertheim (the Netherlands)

Viral Infections

Dissemination of viral infections during mass gatherings

The purpose of this webinar was to outline the most significant viral infections currently associated with mass gatherings, suggest key planning considerations for the organisers of mass gatherings in the context of novel viral outbreaks and provide general advice on the public health aspects of mass events.

Moderator: Prof. Fatma Amer (Chair of ISAC's Viral Infections Working Group)

1. Respiratory-borne viral infections during mass gatherings
Prof. Jaffar A. Al-Tawfiq
2. Monkeypox virus: is it the coming challenge during mass gatherings?
Prof. Alfonso J. Rodriguez-Morales
3. Water- and food- borne viral infections during mass gatherings
Dr Anusha Rohit
4. Vector-borne viral infections during mass gatherings
Dr Rehab Tash

Monkeypox: a new human threat?

Experts provided the latest information on the epidemiology, transmission, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of monkeypox and ISAC's recent webinar which was organised by the Viral Infections Working Group.

Chair: Prof.Fatma Amer

  • Immunology and virology - Dr Noha Hammad
  • Transmission dynamics - Dr Kalisvar Marimuthu
  • Clinical aspects of monkeypox - Prof. Souha Kanj
  • Ongoing epidemiology of monkeypox - Prof. Alfonso Rodriquez-Morales
  • Infection prevention and control of monkeypox - Dr Rehab Tash