The  9th course is scheduled October 11-19, 2025
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, E. Duffy, D. Hughes,
F. Lebreton, S. Lory, A. Myers,
R. Patel, S. Projan, J. Rex,
H.-G. Sahl, M.-W. Tan,
U. Theuretzbacher

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 a growing gap in the first-hand experience and deep knowledge of antibiotic discovery and resistance. The goal of ICARe is to bring leaders in academics and industry together with trained scientists at the dawn of their careers to bridge this gap. State-of-the-art approaches in antibiotic discovery and the impact and mechanisms of resistance will be examined.

Course

The faculty comprises 40 internationally recognized scientists and physicians who have made significant contributions to antibiotic development, infectious diseases, and resistance management. Faculty members are in residence for a minimum of two days for informal interactions with students. Graduates will emerge with a state-of-the-art understanding of the antibiotics in clinical use, their modes of action, and resistance mechanisms. Furthermore, the course covers modern antibiotic discovery approaches, including appropriate chemical matter and libraries, advancing hits to leads, and the application of next-generation nucleic acid-based technologies for drug 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, senior Ph.D. students, and scientists from the diagnostic, biotech, and pharmaceutical industries, either working in or contemplating entering the field of antibiotics. Decision-makers involved in the discovery, development, and approval of new antibiotics and in elaborating programs for better stewardship of antibiotics and mitigation of resistance from both the public and private sectors will also benefit. Attendance is 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, educational background, involvement in the field of antibiotics (research projects, scientific or industrial, which could be presented during the course are welcome), and 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.

Application: March 20 – July 4, 2025.

Late applications will be considered based on space availability.

Programme outline

Antibiotic resistance and discovery

  • Antibiotic resistance is a global and medical problem
  • Antibiotic research and development: History and strategies
  • The socio-economic challenges of antibiotic discovery

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, compensation
  • mobile genetic elements
  • Ribosome: Structure and function
    • Antibiotics active against the large subunit
    • Antibiotics active against the small subunit
  • Nucleic acid synthesis, replication, transcription: Inhibitors of type II topoisomerases of transcription, of nutrient biosynthesis
  • Antimicrobial peptides
  • Efflux: structure-function of efflux systems and inhibitors
  • Influx-Efflux in P. aeruginosa

​​Antibiotic discovery

  • Artificial intelligence-guided antibiotic discovery
  • Antibiotic chemical space: Uniqueness of antimicrobial therapeutics
  • Antibiotic chemical matter:
    Chemical synthesis
    Natural products
    Resolving 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 in vitro and in vivo
  • Preclinical toxicity assessment
  • Anti-infective drugs development and clinical trials
  • Antibiotics under development

Strategies for more focused applications of antibiotics

  • Tolerance and persistence
  • Biofilms
  • Targeting virulence
  • Antibiotic combinations and adjuvants

Susceptibility determination and identification of resistance mechanisms

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

New anti-infective strategies

  • Site specific delivery
  • Bacteriophages,
  • Vaccines
  • CRISPR/Cas9

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
  • Customized hands-on exercises
  • Customized hands-on with participant’s own data sets
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