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Presentation: Bad Bugs No Drugs, The Epidemic of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections as Antibiotic Discovery Stagnates
Time: Saturday Afternoon
Purpose: To provide an update on the current antibiotic crisis, discussing its origins, solutions, and consequences of failure to resolve it
Objectives:
Recognize the current status of the antibiotic crisis
Describe the origins of the antibiotic crisis, including economic and regulatory
Discuss needed strategies to impede antibiotic resistance
Current Positions:
Associate Professor of Medicine, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine & Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Medical Director, Clinical Research Solutions, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute
Bio:
Dr. Spellberg is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He received his BA in Molecular Cell Biology-Immunology in 1994 from UC Berkeley. He then attended medical school at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he received numerous academic honors, including serving as the UCLA AOA Chapter Co-President, and winning the prestigious Stafford Warren award for the topic academic performance in his graduating class. Dr. Spellberg completed his Residency in Internal Medicine and subspecialty fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he received the Department of Medicine Subspecialty Fellow of the Year award.
Dr. Spellberg’s research focuses on using the immune system to prevent and/or treat infections. For the last several years he has worked to develop a vaccine that targets the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and the fungus Candida, which are the second and third most common causes of bloodstream infections. Dr. Spellberg is also developing genetically engineered white blood cells that recapitulate neutrophil functions and can be used to overcome the technical barriers to neutrophil transfusion therapy for neutropenic infections. He has also worked in close collaboration with Dr. Ashraf Ibrahim to study the use of iron chelation therapy for the lethal infection, mucormycosis.
Dr. Spellberg established the first auditable, peer-reviewed dataset that confirms the decline in new antibiotic development over the last two decades, underscoring the need for development of new immune-based therapies for infections. He has worked with staff members at the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to attempt to bring attention to the problems of increasing drug resistance and decreasing new antibiotics. His dataset regarding new drug development has been a cornerstone of the IDSA’s white paper, Bad Bugs, No Drugs, and has been cited extensively in medical literature and on capital hill. He is a Fellow in the IDSA and joined the IDSA’s Antimicrobial Availability Task Force (AATF) to continue working on this critical problem. As a member of the AATF, he has first-authored a consensus IDSA position paper on the appropriate clinical trial designs for infectious diseases.
Dr. Spellberg is the author of Rising Plague, which he wrote to inform and educate the public about the crisis in antibiotic resistant infections and lack of antibiotic development. He is also the author (along with Carlos Ayala) of the popular Boards and Wards series of medical review books.