Cross-border dialogue: An international survey of regulators on phage therapy.

With antimicrobial resistance as a worldwide public health concern, bacteriophage (phage) therapy (PT) may help treat bacterial infections. However, given its particularities compared with traditional small molecule drugs, there are variations in how it is regulated worldwide. Regulators are key players governing PT, yet their perspectives have been largely unexplored.

Impact of enhanced infection control and antimicrobial stewardship on infections by Clostridioides difficile, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales: A stepped-wedge cluster intervention study.

Objectives: Infection prevention and control (IPC) and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) measures are critical to reduce transmission and infection by Clostridioides difficile (CDI) and other enteric pathogens. This study evaluated the impact of enhanced IPC and AMS on CDI and bloodstream infections (BSI) by vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and third-generation cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales (3GCREB).

Methods: The study was conducted in five German university hospitals from January 2016 to July 2019.

Inter- and intra-bacterial strain diversity remains the "elephant in the (living) room".

Acinetobacter baumannii is an opportunistic Gram-negative bacterial pathogen responsible for severe nosocomial infections worldwide. Resistance to last-resort antibiotics causes A. baumannii to be ranked as a top priority for the research and development of new antibiotics by the WHO and an urgent threat to public health by the CDC.

Longitudinal single-cell analysis reveals RUNX1T1 as an early driver in treatment-induced neuroendocrine transdifferentiation.

Treatment-induced neuroendocrine prostate cancer (t-NEPC) is a lethal, castration-resistant subtype of prostate cancer. While t-NEPC typically arises from adenocarcinoma through neuroendocrine transdifferentiation after androgen pathway inhibition, the temporal dynamics and molecular drivers of this process remain poorly understood. Here, utilizing the first-in-field patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model of adenocarcinoma-to-NEPC transdifferentiation (LTL331/331R), we performed longitudinal single-cell transcriptomic sequencing (scRNA-seq) across seven timepoints spanning pre-castration to relapsed NEPC.

Identifying patients at high risk for antibiotic treatment following hospital admission: a predictive score to improve antimicrobial stewardship measures.

Purpose: Identifying patients for clinical studies evaluating strategies to reduce unnecessary antibiotic usage in hospitals is challenging. This study aimed to develop a predictive score to identify newly hospitalized patients with high likelihood of receiving antibiotics, thus improving patient inclusion in future studies focusing on antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs.

Methods: This retrospective analysis used data from the PILGRIM study (NCT03765528), which included 1,600 patients across ten international sites.