Scientific Expertise:

• The Infectious Diseases Community is focused on the use of clinical pharmacology and translational pharmacology to inform and direct efforts aimed at optimizing the use of anti-infective agents to treat and/or prevent communicable diseases caused by viral, bacterial, parasitic, and fungal pathogens. We are specifically interested in PK-PD and PK-toxicity relationships for anti-infective drugs and drug combinations, drug-drug interactions for persons with co-infections, pharmacologic strategies to reduce the emergence of drug resistance, relationships between adherence and efficacy, genetic variability in drug exposures and metabolism, and use of anti-infective agents in special populations such as pregnant women and children.

Catalyst for Innovation:

• To catapult antimicrobial research forward, innovative strategies are required. We need better efficiency and higher success with bridging preclinical and clinical data, predicting Phase 3 results from Phase 2 data, understanding which patients will benefit from novel antibiotic regimens, and predicting robustness of regimens to emergence of resistance. Advances in translational pharmacology, population PK modeling, and pharmacometrics (including multiscale modeling) can be harnessed to answer key treatment questions for Infectious Diseases.

Influence and Impact:

• As many infectious diseases disproportionally affect disadvantaged persons, often in resource-limited settings, and infectious diseases are often curable, the profit motive for developing anti-infective agents is, in some cases, limited. In addition, some infections are becoming nearly untreatable because of drug resistance. In this setting, the Infectious Diseases Community, with its unique assembly of intellectual resources and experience from investigators and clinicians representing academia, industry, government, and other stakeholders who are invested in Infectious Diseases research is particularly valuable. Such a Community of peers can identify knowledge gaps and thoughtfully advocate for research in key areas that is likely to have a major impact on human health. Indeed, we are in a unique position to do so as experts in translational medicine, clinical pharmacology, and drug development of anti-infectives.

Education and Communication:

• To curb the toll that infectious diseases take on human life and to ensure that the pipeline of antibiotics remains adequate now and in the future, we also must ensure that there is a pipeline of investigators interested in Infectious Diseases, educated in clinical pharmacology as it applies to antibiotic development, and invested in antimicrobial research. Further, we as an Infectious Diseases Community can benefit from increased communication and collaboration with other Communities – Special Populations, Biomarkers and Translational Tools, Systems Pharmacology, etc.—to improve our knowledge base and learn about tools to advance new treatments more efficiently to all populations who may benefit from them.

Organizational Effectiveness:

• The Infectious Diseases Community must ensure that the urgency of anti-infectives research and the importance of clinical pharmacologists and related specialists to antimicrobial development is clear to ASCPT. It is also essential that the Infectious Diseases Community has space and visibility within ASCPT and that Community members’ needs and desires are heard and addressed by the Community and ASCPT leadership.