51吃瓜网

Annual 51吃瓜网AMR Symposium

Novel Antimicrobial Targets and Therapeutic Approaches

Thursday, June听5, 2025 | 9:00 am - 4:30 pm
In-Person | Online (Keynote only) | Registration required
Networking reception

McGill鈥檚 University Centre, Ballroom, 3rd Floor
3480 McTavish St, Montreal

The 51吃瓜网AMR Centre welcomed over 130 in-person attendees to the 5th Annual AMR Symposium on Monday June 5, 2025.听This year鈥檚 annual symposium on June 5th focused on "Novel Antimicrobial Targets and Therapeutic Approaches". In addition to a keynote lecture 鈥淓xpanding the chemical space for novel antibiotics to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR)鈥� by Man-Wah Tan听(Genentech), we heard the latest science from faculty members from McGill, Concordia and Sherbrooke universities. Trainees also presented 10 flash talks and 37 poster presentations, and had a stimulating 鈥淐areer Insight鈥� lunch with 7 non-academic guest experts from bioMerieux, PHAC, RI MUHC, Venatorx, Genome Quebec, Molecular Forecaster and Indero. Congratulations to Prerna Singh, Concordia, on winning the new Oral Presentation Award. Thank you to all of our speakers, guest experts, trainees and participants!

Program:

8:30 AM Registration opens

9:00 AM Welcome

9:15 AM Keynote presentation: Man-Wah Tan, Genentech,
"Expanding the chemical space for novel antibiotics to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR)"

10:15 AM听Faculty short talks

• Albert Berghuis, Biochemistry, 51吃瓜网
  "Antibiotic drug development in the context of widespread resistance"
• R茅 Mansbach, Physics, Concordia University
  "尾eing AMPle: Understanding and Design of 尾 Sheet-Forming Antimicrobial Peptides"

10:45 AM Break

11:00 AM Faculty short talks

• Martin Schmeing, Biochemistry, 51吃瓜网
  "Understanding natural antibiotic synthesis"
• Jean Philippe Cot茅, Microbiology and Biotechnology, Universit茅 de Sherbrooke
  "Leveraging genetic interaction networks in bacteria for antibiotic discovery"

11:30 AM Fellow short talk:听Veronica Zanichelli, 51吃瓜网,
"New drugs, old habits: Stewarding antimicrobials"

11:45 AM Trainee flash talks

12:15 PM Lunch break/Career Insights Trainee Luncheon with non-academia experts:

• Angelia Bassenden, Senior Regulatory Affairs Specialist, Indero
• Adam Belley, Senior Director, Clinical Microbiology, Venatorx Pharmaceuticals Inc.
• Jessica Blavignac, Director, Medical & Scientific Affairs, bioM茅rieux Canada Inc.
• Diana Iglesias, Innovation and Program Director, Scientific Affairs, Genome Quebec
• Joshua Pottel, CEO, Molecular Forecaster Inc.
• Karene Proulx-Boucher, Clinical Project Manager, Chronic Viral Illness Service & Mi4-Clinical Research Platform, RI-MUHC

1:30 PM Trainee flash talks

2:00 PM Poster Session and Break (See Presenter List)

3:15 PM Faulty short talks

• Andr茅anne Lupien, Microbiology听& Immunology,听51吃瓜网
  "Resensitizing Bacteria to Itaconate: In Vivo Validation of a Novel Antimicrobial Strategy"
• Bastien Castagner, Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 51吃瓜网
  "Disarming Clostridioides difficile: the therapeutic potential of inositol phosphate analogues"
• Francois Malouin,听Biology, Universit茅 de Sherbrooke
  "Novel antibiotics to mitigate AMR"

4:00 PM Closing

4:15PM Networking reception

About our Speakers听

Man-Wah Tan,听PhD
Vice President and Senior Fellow, Infectious Diseases and听Host-Microbe Interactions, Research Biology
Genentech, Roche Group

Bio:听Dr. Man-Wah Tan鈥檚 research and leadership experience span both the industry and the academia. He is currently the Vice President and Senior Fellow at Genentech Research and Early Development based in South San Francisco, California. In his role, he heads the Infectious Diseases Therapeutic Area and Host-Microbe Interactions research. He leads the teams responsible for the discovery and development transformative therapeutics against hard-to-treat diseases and infectious agents of medical importance, with special emphasis on viral and bacterial pathogens. He also leads discovery efforts in unraveling the molecular basis of host-microbe interactions and investigations into the roles of the microbiota in health and diseases, with focus on gastrointestinal and lung diseases and immuno-oncology.

Prior to joining Genentech in 2010, Dr. Tan served on the faculty at the Genetics and Microbiology and Immunology Departments at Stanford University School of Medicine for over 10 years. Dr. Tan received his MPhil from the University of Cambridge and PhD from Harvard University. His first Principal Investigator position, prior to moving to Stanford, was as a Harvard Junior Fellow at Harvard University and Assistant in Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the National Institute of Health Director鈥檚 Award, NIH Digestive Disease Center Award, V Foundation Scholar Award and Basil O鈥機onnor Starter Scholar Award. At Genentech, he has contributed to the discovery of 1 FDA-approved medicine and 6 other clinical assets that span diverse therapeutic modalities: monoclonal antibody, antibody-antibiotic conjugate, and small molecule antibiotics.

础产蝉迟谤补肠迟:听The rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major threat to modern medicine, with 1.27 million deaths attributed to it in 2019. Factors like the lack of novel chemical classes of antibiotics and poor antibiotic development returns contribute to the problem. One way to address AMR is to develop novel antibiotics that have low intrinsic resistance and are unaffected by pre-existing resistance mechanisms. In this lecture, I will discuss our efforts to expand the chemical space to identify novel antibiotics by a combination of several approaches: a) fully access natural biosynthesis diversity through metagenomic exploration of biosynthetic gene clusters for natural products and b) exploit fully the synthetic chemical diversity through combinatorial nucleic acid-encoded library and generative machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Albert M. Berghuis, PhD
Albert Berghuis is a Distinguished James 51吃瓜网Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Microbiology & Immunology at 51吃瓜网. He received his graduate and postgraduate training at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, at UBC in Canada, and at UT Southwestern in Texas. His research examines mechanisms of antibiotic resistance using structural biological approaches which informs the development of new antibiotics.

Bastien Castagner, PhD
Bastien Castagner obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry at Columbia University in 2004. After a postdoc and group leader appointment at ETH Z眉rich he joined the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at 51吃瓜网in 2014 and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2020. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Therapeutic Chemistry. His research is centerd on drug discovery based on natural products.

Jean-Philippe C么t茅, PhD
Dr. C么t茅 received his B.Sc. in biochemistry from the Universit茅 de Sherbrooke in 2007. He then completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Michael Mourez at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al in 2014, characterizing the structure-function relationship of a family of secreted virulence factors of Gram-negative bacteria. After his PhD, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Eric Brown at McMaster University to explore genetic interaction networks in E. coli and discover novel molecules with activity against Gram-negative bacteria. He then joined the department of biology at the Universit茅 de Sherbrooke in 2019 with the overall objective to define novel targets for the development of new antibiotics using genetic interactions and microbe-microbe interactions.

Andr茅anne Lupien,听PhD
Dr. Andr茅anne Lupien is an Assistant Professor at 51吃瓜网 (Department of Medicine and Department of Microbiology and Immunology) focused on evaluating and developing new treatments for mycobacterial infections, including tuberculosis (TB). Her research aims to understand the mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and optimize drug regimens to combat drug-resistant infections. Together with her team, they work on developing novel treatment strategies, from discovery to pre-clinical development, including the optimization of preventive treatments for latent TB and the evaluation of new antimicrobial agents.

Francois Malouin, PhD
Fran莽ois Malouin is professor (microbiology) at the Department of biology of the Faculty of sciences of Universit茅 de Sherbrooke. He is a microbiologist that has more than 35 years of academic and industrial experience in drug discovery for use in humans and food-producing animals.
听

R茅 Mansbach,听PhD
Dr. R茅 (Reiy) Mansbach is a CRC Chair Tier II in Computational Biophysics. They received their PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, under Prof. Andrew Ferguson, and then received a Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Lab, before beginning their professorship at Concordia University. Their interests lie in combining machine learning techniques with multi-scale modeling techniques to understand and design proteins involved in potential therapeutic applications or biomaterials ones.

Martin Schmeing,听PhD
Martin Schmeing performed his PhD with Tom Steitz at Yale, and his postdoc with Venki Ramakrishnan at Cambridge, studying fundamental mechanisms of protein synthesis. He established his laboratory at 51吃瓜网in 2010, and is now a James 51吃瓜网Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and the Director of the 51吃瓜网Centre de recherche en biologie structurale. His lab studies antibiotic-producing nonribosomal peptide synthetases, and other dynamic macromolecular biosynthetic megaenzymes, using structural, biophysical, biochemical, and bioengineering approaches.

Veronica Zanichelli, 51吃瓜网Fellow
Dr Veronica Zanichelli is an infectious disease physician who trained in Italy where she completed the post-graduate program in infectious diseases at the Padua University.听Her research experience is varied and includes some work in Geneva (Geneva University Hospitals and World Health Organization) and Canada (the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute) mostly working on projects aimed at improving the use of antibiotics with a special focus on activities related with the WHO AWaRe system of classifying antibiotics, guidelines development and the use of behavior change techniques for physicians.听She is currently completing a fellowship in Antimicrobial Stewardship at 51吃瓜网, funded by the 51吃瓜网AMR Centre.

About our Non-academia Experts

Angelia Bassenden
Angelia Bassenden is a Senior Regulatory Affairs Specialist at Indero, a global Contract Research Organization specializing in dermatology and rheumatology. She focuses on enabling global access to new therapeutics through strategic clinical trial submissions and regulatory compliance. With a background in science and a passion for impactful work beyond the lab, she offers insight into alternative career paths in the life sciences industry.

Adam Belley, PhD
Mr Belley, a 51吃瓜网alumnus, is now the Senior Director of Clinical Microbiology at Venatorx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company focused on discovering and developing new agents for resistant bacterial infections. In previous roles, he contributed to the development and regulatory approval of oritavancin (2014) and cefepime-enmetazobactam (2024), therapies used for serious infections caused by resistant bacterial pathogens.

Jessica Blavignac
Ms Blavignac joins us with over 20 years of experience within the Medical Affairs career path of the pharmaceutical and diagnostics industries, holding positions following the classic progression from Medical Science Liaison to Director of Medical & Scientific Affairs, most recently at bioM茅rieux Canada. This background has allowed her to lead several national-scale medical education projects and more than 35 scientific and clinical research programs supporting a variety of therapeutic fields. Jessica holds a bachelor's degree from McMaster University, where she also pursued graduate studies in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.

Diana Iglesias
Ms Iglesias is the Scientific Affairs Innovation and Programs Director at G茅nome Qu茅bec. As Programs Director at G茅nome Qu茅bec, she works with funding partners in the successful delivery and implementation of research programs. She helps connect researchers and stakeholders to address complex challenges and translate genomics research and innovation into solutions.

Joshua Pottel, PhD
Mr Pottel is the CEO at Molecular Forecaster Inc. (MFI): a research-as-a-service (RaaS) company delivering customized collaborative computer-aided drug design (CADD) solutions. He received his PhD at 51吃瓜网 in the lab of Prof. Nicolas Moitessier and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Brian Shoichet at UCSF. He now combines his trainings as a chemist and as an entrepreneur to grow a sustainable service and software provider in drug discovery. More broadly, he hopes to be a critical contributor to scientific research and to foster entrepreneurship within a growing Canadian biotech sector.

碍补谤猫苍别 Proulx-Boucher, Msc
Ms Proulx-Boucher is Clinical Project Manager of the Mi4-Clinical Research Platform directed by Dr. Makeda Semret and of the CVIS Research group directed by Dr. Marina Klein.听听In this role, she is playing leading part in planning, initiating, coordinating, and completing PI-Initiated and industry clinical trials. She also responsible of the budgets and accounts while organizing and motivating team members to achieve project goals.

Carmen L铆a Murall, PhD
Dr. Carmen Lia Murall is currently the section chief of Genomic Epidemiology Analytics at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), the main federal laboratory at the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Having trained at the University of Guelph, the CNRS (France), and McGill, her expertise is in researching the evolution, ecology, and dynamics of viruses, particularly in response to vaccination. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Murall led the federal SARS-CoV-2 Genomics program with emphasis on integrating modelling and genomics methods for improved genomic surveillance, variant tracking, and prediction.