This proposal is to request support for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Antibiotics and Resistance: Challenges and Solutions, organized by Gerry Wright, Deborah Hung and Stewart L. Fisher, which will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico from February 14 - 19, 2010. In the face of a growing crisis in antibiotic resistance and the emergence of new bacterial pathogens, there is a pressing clinical need for new antibiotics. Paradoxically, this call for new drugs comes at a time when investment in antibiotic development in the pharmaceutical industry is at historically low levels. Despite the promise of the genomic revolution to inform drug development and innovations in drug discovery and the fundamental biology that underpins it, modern control of infectious disease with antibiotics is perilously fragile. This meeting brings together researchers from medicine, academe and industry and from across scientific disciplines to discuss the challenges of antibiotic development in the 21st Century. What is the scope of the problem? What are possible solutions? What are the imperatives for the short and long term and is the traditional antibiotic paradigm in need of an overhaul? These questions will be the focus of the meeting that will help to define the problems and solutions in antibiotic development.
The cycle of antibiotic discovery and resistance represents a growing challenge faced by clinicians and the pharmaceutical sector across the globe. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Antibiotics and Resistance: Challenges and Solutions will bring together a broad spectrum of researchers to discuss short and long term solutions to this challenge. Topics under discussion at this meeting have the potential to expand our understanding of the evolution and function of antibiotics and to inform next generation drug discovery.
