Linked to EAHP Statements:
Section 2: Selection, Procurement and Distribution
Section 4: Clinical Pharmacy Services

ACPE UAN: 0475-0000-16-018-L04-P. A knowledge based activity.

Abstract

The antibiotic pipeline is not as efficient as we all would prefer. As a consequence, we can only use a few new antibiotics and we have to revive older antibiotics to use them in infections with resistant bugs. We do this with the goal to avoid resistance by using them instead of the newer antibiotics. Meanwhile, we have a situation where we use new antibiotics for serious infections with sometimes multi-resistant drugs and in the same field old, sometimes almost forgotten antibiotics.

The challenge for the future will be the following: we really need new antibiotics with new drug targets to treat infections where we see an unmet need. Therefore we need also a new approach in studying those drugs, to bring them into the market quickly. On the other hand, we have to revive old antibiotics and get new information for the use of those antibiotics in infections they have not been studied in when those drugs were invented. There are already some studies on-going, but we cannot see a broad breakthrough for the most emergent bugs in humans like ESKAPE, Tuberculosis or others.

The seminar will cover new antibiotic drug targets, therapy with bacteriophages and other new approaches and will give an overview over old revived antibiotics.

Teaching goals: 

• To describe new drug targets and new therapeutic approaches in the field of bacterial infections;
• To define the required knowledge when using old antibiotics;
• To list new antibiotics for dealing with problematic infections.