The  10th course is scheduled October 10-18, 2026
Course Director

P. Courvalin (Institut Pasteur)

Scientific Advisors

M. Gilmore (Harvard Medical School),
H. Moser (HEM Consulting),
G. Wright (McMaster University)

Scientific committee

J.-F. Collet (de Duve Institute, BE),
D. Hughes (Uppsala Univ. SE),
F. Lebreton (Walter Reed, USA),
S. Lory (Harvard Medical School, USA),
A. Myers (Harvard Univ. USA),
R. Patel (Mayo Clinic, USA),
S. Projan (Beat the Reaper, USA),
J. Rex (F2Gldt, UK),
H.-G. Sahl (Univ. of Bonn, DE),
M.-W. Tan (Genentech, USA)

Organizing committee

C. Grillot-Courvalin,
L. Meyssirel,
P. Leverrier

The specific goal of ICARe is to bring leaders in academics and industry
together with trained scientists at the dawn of their careers.

Objective

The emergence and spread of bacteria resistant to many drug classes seriously threaten all branches of modern medicine. There is currently no course providing advanced instruction on antibiotics and resistance. The specific goal of ICARe is to bring leaders in academics and industry together with trained scientists at the dawn of their careers. Cutting- edge approaches for the study of resistance and antibiotic discovery will be examined.

Course

The faculty, composed of 40 internationally recognized scientists and physicians who have made important contributions to antibiotic development, infectious diseases and resistance management will be in residence for a minimum of two days for informal interactions. Graduates will emerge with a state-of-the-art understanding of existing antibiotics: modes of action, mechanisms of resistance, approaches for mining chemical space, advancing hits to leads, the application of next generation nucleic acid-based technologies for antibiotic discovery and resistance detection. The course aims to build an international cadre of collaborative, well networked, and highly trained specialists.

Audience

ICARe is designed for assistant professors, post-doctoral and ID fellows, new scientists from diagnostic, pharmaceutical industry, or from biotech, either working in or contemplating entering the field of antibiotics. Decision-makers involved in the discovery, development, and approval of new antibiotics, in the elaboration of programs for better use of antibiotics and reducing the development of resistance are also welcome. Participants can be from both the public and private sectors. Attendance will be limited to 40 students.

Selection criteria

Participants will be selected by the Scientific Committee that will ensure that the participants reflect the global nature of the problem with a special attention to gender equality, according to their educational background, involvement in the field of antibiotics (research projects, scientific or industrial, which could be presented during the course are welcome), decision-making responsibility in the finding of new antibiotics and of their appropriate use.

Format

The course will be administered over 9 days and will consist of formal instruction and hands-on bioinformatics.

The 10th edition will be held October 10-18, 2026

Online registration: from March 16th to July 3rd on icarecourse.org

Late applications will be considered based on space availability.

ICARe outline

Antibiotic resistance and discovery

  • Antibiotic resistance is a global and medical problem
  • Role of public-private partnerships in supporting antimicrobial resistance innovation
  • Antimicrobial resistance innovation: Role of biotechs

Modes of action of and mechanisms of resistance to existing classes

  • Cell wall: Structure, synthesis, and targets
  • Inner- and Outer-membrane barriers
  • Penicillin-binding proteins
  • Beta-lactams, beta-lactamases and inhibitors
  • Glyco-lipopeptides
  • Biochemistry and genetics of resistance: Biochemistry, Mutations, selection, biological cost, and compensation
  • Mobile genetic elements
  • Ribosome: Structure and function
  • Antibiotics active against the small subunit
  • Antibiotics active against the large subunit
  • Nucleic acid synthesis, replication, transcription: Inhibitors of type II topoisomerases, transcription, and nutrient biosynthesis
  • Antimicrobial peptides
  • Efflux: Structure-function of efflux systems and inhibitors
      • Influx-Efflux in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

​​Antibiotic discovery

  • Antibiotic combinations, adjuvants
  • Artificial intelligence-guided antibiotic discovery
  • Antibiotic chemical space: Uniqueness of antimicrobial therapeutics
  • Antibiotic chemical matter:
    • Chemical synthesis
    • Natural products
    • Resolving the bottlenecks
  • Screens and hit generation
  • Systems biology to guide antibiotic discovery
    and mode of action

Antibiotic development and approval

  • Hit to lead
  • Preclinical PK/PD and optimizing leads
  • Preclinical toxicity assessment
  • Regulatory considerations in anti-infective drug development
    and clinical trials
  • Clinical considerations in early and late phase drug development

Strategies for more focused applications of antibiotics

  • Tolerance and persistence
  • Targeting virulence
  • Biofilms
  • Animal models

Susceptibility determination and identification of resistance mechanisms

  • Antibiogramme: Phenotypic techniques and clinical categorisation
  • Laboratory based and rapid techniques
  • Point-of-care diagnostics tests

New anti-infective strategies

  • Site specific delivery
  • Bacteriophages
  • Vaccines
  • Accelerating antibiotic discovery with artificial intelligence

Perspectives

  • Diagnostic and antibiotic stewardship:
    Optimizing the treatment of infections
  • Case studies in antimicrobial resistance:
    Urgent needs for new agents
  • How to return to the future?

Bioinformatics

  • Bioinformatics in the resistance field: General concepts
  • Applications to the genomic surveillance of resistance
  • Workshop: Guided hands-on exercises
Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top