BM0701 - Antibiotic Transport and Efflux: New Strategies to combat bacterial resistance (ATENS)

The main objective of the Action is to create a framework that involves collaboration between experts in the many fields of science necessary for understanding efflux-mediated resistance at the molecular and genetic levels and to translate this knowledge into the development of diagnostic tests and antimicrobials that will, in the future, help control MDR infectious diseases throughout Europe.

Multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria constitute an ever-increasing threat to public health. The principal mechanism of MDR is the active expulsion of drugs by bacterial pumps that expel unrelated compounds. A coordinated European effort is urgently needed for the control of drug efflux mechanisms that mediate resistance against all antibiotic families in bacterial pathogens. The COST Action will originally include scientists from 19 EU countries with competences ranging from clinical bacteriology to chemical synthesis. Its sub-objectives are to determine prevalence and evolution of bacterial drug efflux mechanisms, identify risk factors, decipher genetic regulation of this mechanism, elucidate the functional and structural bases of efflux resistance, and to synthesize and evaluate molecules that obviate efflux-mediated resistance.

About 40 teams will constitute 4 initial Working Groups: Clinical and veterinary bacteriology; Molecular basis of drug efflux; Structural genomic, bioinformatics and molecular modelling; Production of new molecules, chemosensitizers or inhibitory agents. This multi- and interdisciplinary approach will identify new targets and provide a generation of effective agents against efflux mechanisms in MDR bacterial pathogens.

Keywords: Multidrug resistance and pathogenic bacteria, drug efflux and membrane transport proteins, structural genomics and structural biology, chemistry and rational design, purification and/or synthesis of inhibitors/ chemosensitisers of drug efflux