Join researchers for Outpacing Antimicrobial Resistance, a two-day symposium devoted to understanding and beating antibacterial resistant microbes, jointly hosted by the IGB, OVCR, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, School of Chemical Sciences, and School of Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Outpacing Antimicrobial Resistance will focus on the urgent problem of antimicrobial resistance – the ability of pathogens to survive exposure to existing therapeutic drugs – from both a policy perspective and a research perspective. This issue, which is a potentially catastrophic problem facing humanity, has seen increased public and media attention in recent years. The scientific work within the IGB’s Mining Microbial Genomes research theme is closely aligned with this global problem. The symposium intends to raise awareness and highlight challenges as well as potential solutions.
A widely-read 2013 editorial in Nature entitled “Report to the President on Combating Antibiotic Resistance,” produced by the United States’ President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found that 23,000 lives were lost in the U.S. each year from antibiotic resistance-related infections, and 2 million such infections occur annually. The subsequent report “Securing New Drugs for Future Generations: Review on Antimicrobial Resistance,” commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, made a global call to action. These reports predict that without aggressive measures, “an additional 10 million lives would be lost each year” to drug-resistant microbes by 2050 “at a cost to the world economy of 100 trillion USD.” Despite these looming threats, progress in this area has been slow, with pharmaceutical companies reluctant to invest in antimicrobial development for fear of rapid obsolescence and low financial returns.
Experts in the fields of microbiology, immunology, infectious disease, drug development and policy will discuss the current global threat posed by drug-resistant pathogens, share their knowledge of policies to address the problem, and speak on their research efforts to produce novel treatments at a rate that can outpace the development of antimicrobial resistance.
Public lectures on September 24th will being at 7:00PM at Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Avenue, Urbana. Session Speakers on September 25th will being at 8:30AM at 612 Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, 1206 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana.
Visit outpacesymposium.igb.illinois.edu for full agenda information and free registration.
Partial support for this event is provided by the Olga G. Nalbandov Lecture Funds at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign