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Organised by the ISAC Early Career Working Group
Multidrug resistant bacterial infections continue to pose a serious global health threat, driving treatment failures, limiting therapeutic options, and increasing clinical burden across both hospital and community settings. As resistance rises, the need for innovative antimicrobial strategies has never been more urgent.
This webinar brings together leading experts to explore recent advances in antimicrobial therapy from clinical, translational, and discovery perspectives. The session will offer an integrated view of how newly approved antibiotics, bacteriophage therapy and emerging antibacterial agents may shape the future management of multidrug resistant infections.
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Speakers
Professor Shuichi Abe is a clinician-scientist in Infectious Diseases and Director at Yamagata Prefectural Central Hospital, Japan, and a member of the Japan-Thailand Pathogen Hunter’s Research Team. He specialises in respiratory and multidrug resistant infections, hospital epidemiology, antimicrobial stewardship and IPC, with extensive experience managing complex cases. His research focuses on clinical infectious diseases, surveillance and antimicrobial resistance, translating evidence into improved care and strategies against severe MDR infections.
Associate Professor Anthony Kicic is Head of Airway Epithelial Research and a Stan Perron Charitable Foundation Research Fellow and also holds a Western Australian Cystic Fibrosis Research Collaborative Program Fellowship. His work focuses on airway epithelial biology, chronic respiratory diseases, cystic fibrosis and new therapies for respiratory infections.
He leads the Western Australian arm of the Phage Australia Project, advancing bacteriophage therapy for multidrug resistant respiratory infections. His team has identified more than 2,500 phages active against key respiratory pathogens, driving translational research aimed at bringing phage therapy into routine clinical care.
Professor Hiroshi Hamamoto is Professor of Infectious Diseases at Yamagata University, specialising in developing novel antimicrobial agents against multidrug resistant pathogens and uncovering the molecular mechanisms of bacterial and fungal pathogenicity. His multidisciplinary work-spanning genomics, natural products chemistry, analytical chemistry, pharmacokinetics, toxicology and chemical biology-supports the discovery of new therapeutic targets and next-generation antimicrobial compounds, translating fundamental research into clinically relevant applications.
Associate Professor Leshan Wannigama, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Infectious Diseases Physician at Yamagata University and Yamagata University Hospital. He also leads the Pathogen Hunters Collaborative as Principal Investigator, with research focused on infectious disease diagnostics, surveillance and novel therapeutic approaches.
Dr Jinxin Zhao is a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg and Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Team Lead at Monash University. He specialises in AI, bioinformatics, microbial genomics, single-cell sequencing and mathematical modelling, developing computational approaches to understand antimicrobial resistance, bacterial evolution, and host–pathogen interactions. His work bridges data science and microbiology to support next-generation infectious disease research.
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