Antimicrobial Resistance: What's New and What's Next
Continuing Education Credits
Objectives
- Demonstrate how antimicrobial drug resistance is proceeding faster than new drug discoveries.
- Identify the current most resistant pathogens, their classes, and their mechanisms of resistance.
- Identify the ways that pathogens acquire and confer resistance to each other.
- Describe current global efforts at surveillance, and goals for future surveillance.
- Compare current methods of bacterial identification and susceptibility/resistance testing with newer methods; discuss technologies on the horizon.
- Compare current antibiotics and their mechanisms of action with emerging antimicrobial drugs and their mechanisms of action.
- Define antimicrobial stewardship and describe the efforts towards improving it.
Course Outline
- Introduction
- Antimicrobial Resistance as a Global Health Threat
- Global Epidemiology
- History of the Development of Antimicrobials
- Brief History of Antimicrobial Resistance
- Disclaimer
- When were the first antimicrobials developed?
- True or False: The U.S. has the highest rate of antimicrobial resistance.
- Update on the Most Resistant Pathogens
- Bacterial "Bad Guys"
- More on Global Resistant Bacteria
- Bacterial "Bad Guys" in the United States
- Resistant Fungi
- Resistant Parasites
- Which of the following bacteria is on the WHO list of critical priority resistant bacteria?
- Which of the following groups of pathogens has the fewest number of antimicrobial drugs that treat them?
- Antimicrobial Drugs: Mechanisms of Action and Resistance
- Introduction to Microbial Drug Classes and Development of Resistance
- Brief Overview of Mechanisms of Antimicrobial Action
- Antimicrobial Resistance Mechanisms
- More About Acquired Resistance Mechanisms
- What is an example of an antibiotic that targets cell wall synthesis?
- Which of the following is not a method bacteria use to acquire resistance?
- Dissemination of Antimicrobial Resistance
- Basic Means of Dissemination
- Factors Driving the Spread of Antimicrobial Resistance
- Agricultural Practices
- War and Antimicrobial Resistance
- Which of the following is not a factor that leads to the development and spread of resistance organisms?
- Global Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance
- Strengthening Surveillance
- Key Findings of the 2025 GLASS Report
- The 2025 Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS) report by the WHO has gaps in data on which of the following?
- True or False: Almost all of the countries in the Americas were included in the 2025 GLASS report.
- Testing for Antimicrobial Susceptibility and Resistance
- Overview of Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing
- Conventional Methods: Manual Phenotypic
- Conventional Methods: Molecular Based
- Non-Conventional Methods
- Microfluidic Technologies: Lab-on-a-Chip Diagnostics
- Which of the following is a disadvantage of using broth serial dilutions for antibiotic susceptibility testing?
- Which of the following is a disadvantage of MALDI-TOF technology?
- Emerging Antibiotics and Non-Antibiotic Antimicrobials
- New Antibiotics
- Introduction to Non-Antibiotic Antimicrobials
- Non-Antibiotic Antimicrobials: Antibodies and Antibody-Antibiotic Conjugates
- Non-Antibiotic Antimicrobials: Antimicrobial Peptides
- Non-Antibiotic Antimicrobials: Bacteriophages
- Non-Antibiotic Antimicrobials: Gene Therapy
- Which antimicrobial therapeutic consists of a short chain of amino acids and typically targets bacterial membranes?
- Where were CRISPR-Cas9 mechanisms originally discovered?
- Antimicrobial Stewardship and Synopsis
- Importance of Antimicrobial Stewardship
- Goals and Efforts of Antimicrobial Stewardship
- Antimicrobial Resistance and AI
- Synopsis
- What is antimicrobial stewardship?
- References
- References
Additional Information
Level of Instruction: Intermediate
Intended Audience: Medical laboratory scientists, clinical microbiologists, infectious disease nurses, medical laboratory technicians, laboratory supervisors, and laboratory managers. This course is also appropriate for MLS and MLT students and pathology residents.
Author Information Margaret Reinhart, MS, MLS(ASCP), is a Senior Lecturer emerita of Biological Sciences at St. Joseph's University (formerly University of the Sciences), where she taught hematology, clinical immunology, microbiology, parasitology, and other related courses, as well as directed the MLS program for over 30 years. She also taught courses in Global Environmental Sustainability and Animal Studies. She is currently an adjunct instructor in Hematology at Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA. She holds a Master's Degree in Biology and a Master's Degree in Health Care Administration.
The author has no conflict of interest to disclose.
Reviewer Information: Kayla Lichtenberger, BS, M(ASCP), MLT(ASCP), has built a progressive career in clinical microbiology at Essentia Health. She began as a medical laboratory assistant, where she developed a strong foundation in diagnostic workflows before transitioning into the microbiology department. There, she advanced into leadership as the lead technologist, overseeing daily operations, guiding workflow efficiency, and supporting high‑quality diagnostic results. Kayla holds a Bachelor of Science in microbiology from North Dakota State University and a medical laboratory technician degree from Rasmussen College, grounding her leadership in both scientific training and hands‑on laboratory experience.
Course Description: Resistance to antimicrobial drugs is currently one of the major global health threats. Pathogens are acquiring resistance faster than new drugs are entering the market. This course provides an update on which resistant microbes pose the greatest threats and on what we are currently doing to address them through laboratory diagnosis, drug discovery, and surveillance. It also provides a brief review of antibiotic drug classes and mechanisms of resistance. The course will also introduce new laboratory methods and new classes of antimicrobial drugs, offering hope that we won't lose the battle against resistance.