Advances in Antibiotic and Drug-Resistance Mechanisms, 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

The discovery of antibiotics has revolutionized medicine by enabling the efficient treatment of many life-threatening bacterial infections. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is today universally recognised as a global threat because of the rapid emergence and dissemination of resistant bacteria and genes among humans, animals, and the environment on the global scale and represents a heavy burden for healthcare systems all over the world. The currently estimated global AMR-related mortality rates are substantial, and this is an “ecosystem-related” problem threatening the interplay of human–animal and environmental health (“One Health”). Resistant bacteria arising in one geographical area can spread via cross-reservoir transmission to other areas worldwide, either by human-to-human transmission and/or exposure through the food chain and environmental contaminations. In humans, the drivers of antibiotic resistance are complex and multi-sectoral, including food and companion animals, fish, vegetables, and the environmental resistance gene pool.

As the incidence of MDR bacterial infections for which few effective treatments are available increases, novel therapies are needed to curb this serious problem. The recent commercialization of novel antibiotics resulted in more or less the rapid emergence of bacterial isolates that either became resistant during therapy or were already resistant to these novel molecules. The aim of this Special Issue is to present the state-of-the-art data on the last-resort antibiotics, either repurposed or novel antibiotics used in human therapy and their associated resistance mechanisms, with special emphasis on the following:

• The presence of antibiotics in the different compartments (human, animal, and environment).
• The One Health spectrum dynamics of transmission and the prevalence of community-acquired resistance in humans, animals, and the environment.
• Studies on the effects of antimicrobial agent exposure on the healthy human commensal microbiota and their negative consequences in terms of both the colonization with antibiotic resistant bacteria and the bacterial population imbalance and dysfunctions in the susceptible bacterial microbiota.
• The structure–function analysis of AMR gene products.
• Companion diagnostic tools for the safe use of novel therapies.
• Epidemiology.
• Genetic basis at the origin of AMR gene dispersion.
• The origin of the AMR genes.
• Novel antibiotics under development and in clinical use.
• The novel inhibitors of beta-lactamases and their combinations.

Dr. Thierry Naas
Dr. Saoussen Oueslati
Guest Editor

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• AMR
• genetics
• novel antibiotics
• resistance
• mechanisms
• diagnostics
• One Health
• in vitro
• in vivo
• selection