Evolutionary Biology meets the Antibiotic Crisis

8 May 2019, 12:00 → 10 May 2019, 14:00 Europe/Berlin

The current spread of antibiotic resistance poses a dramatic threat to global health. We are thus in urgent need of novel treatment strategies. As the evolutionary potential of pathogens is part of the problem, sustainable strategies should take account of the selection dynamics underlying the emergence and rise in resistance. However, most public health measures do not yet address pathogen evolution. The aim of the symposium and workshop is therefore to strengthen the exchange between fundamental research in evolutionary biology on antibiotic resistance and medical practice. How can medical challenges be approached by evolutionary biologists in a sensible way? And how can insights from evolutionary biology be implemented in practice? The workshop will therefore bring together physicians with expertise in antibiotic therapy, experimental evolutionary biologists, and modelers. The first part consists of a symposium with open registration (available spots limited to 20). In the second part, invited participants will form discussion groups to develop novel ideas concerning the above questions.

Wednesday 8 May

12:30 Get-Together and Welcome

Day 1: Session 1

1 Resistance evolution against antimicrobial peptides

Speaker: Jens Rolff (FU Berlin)

2 Precision Medicine prevents evolving drug resistance in M. tubercolosis

Speaker: Christoph Lange (Research Center Borstel)

3 Pharmacodynamic inoculum effect from the perspective of bacterial population modeling

Speaker: Roland Regös (ETH Zürich)

4 tba

Speaker: Annelies Zinkernagel (University Hospital Zürich)

15:00 Coffee Break

Day 1: Session 2

5 Optimal antibiotic dosing: Insights from theory and experiments

Speaker: Hildegard Uecker (MPI for Evolutionary Biology)

6 Antimicrobial Resistance at the animal-human-environment interface

Speaker: Uwe Rösler (FU Berlin)

7 tba

Speaker: Marcus Fulde (FU Berlin)

8 Lessons from the Real World Scenario: Fighting Pseudomonas Aeruginosa in Cystic Fibrosis (CF)

Speaker: Ingrid Bobis

17:00 Coffee Break

Day 1: Session 3

9 Antibiotic treatment strategies and their clinical implementation

Speaker: Anette Friedrichs (UKSH)

10 Rapid in vivo resistance evolution during antibiotic therapy of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Speaker: Leif Tüffers (Uni Kiel)

18:30 Aperitif

Thursday 9 May

Day 2: Session 1

11 Sequential therapy as a strategyy to minimize resistance evolution

Speaker: Hinrich Schulenburg (MPI for Evolutionary Biology)

12 Antibiotic cycling or mixing - is there a clinical way to avoid antimicrobial resistance?

Speaker: Jan Rupp (UKSH)

13 Resistance evolution of E.coli in populations and communities

Speaker: Alex Hall (ETH Zürich)

10:30 Coffee Break

Day 2: Session 2

14 Pathogen-based precision medicine for drug-resistant tuberculosis

Speaker: Stefan Niemann (Research Center Borstel)

15 Guideline-adapted diagnostics for cystic fibrosis patients

Speaker: Annette Krenz-Weinreich (Sana-Kliniken Lübeck und Ost-Holstein)

16 How dead is dead in biofilms?

Speaker: Annette Moter (Charité Berlin)

17 In vitro epidemiology: Comparison of cycling, mixing and combination therapy

Speaker: Sebastian Bonhoeffer (ETH Zürich)

13:00 Lunch

Discussions: Invited participants

Friday 10 May

Discussions: Invited Participants