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Researchers at the National Institutes of Health recently outlined strategies to tackle President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which aims to cut cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years. They made one glaring omission: a plan to combat drug-resistant superbugs. The two public health crises — cancer and drug-resistant infections — are deeply intertwined. Patients with cancer are three times more likely to die of an infection than patients without the disease. Unless we quickly mobilize to fight superbugs, the Cancer Moonshot will never achieve liftoff.

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The world’s population is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and healthcare institutions are sounding the alarm that inaction could result in a breakdown of healthcare systems worldwide within the next 30 years. In 2021, the World Health Organization named antimicrobial resistance as one of the top 10 emerging threats to global health, but lawmakers in the United States have been unable to pass legislation to address the crisis. Levy CIMAR Founding Director and Dean of Tufts School of Medicine, Helen Boucher, MD, spoke on the urgency for Congress to address AMR seriously. She said, \u0022this is a game where there needs to be planning in advance for the threats we know and some we don’t know.\u0022

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Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, chair of the panel, said that everyone must use antibiotics responsibly. \u0022Antibiotics alone have extended our average lifespan by 23 years,\u0022 Markey said. \u0022But the rise in antimicrobial resistance threatens to undo 100 years of medical progress.\u0022 Dr. Helen Boucher, Levy CIMAR Founding Director as well as Dean and Professor of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, urged the committee to pass a bipartisan bill already introduced this Congress and called on the Biden administration to appoint someone to oversee issues related to antibiotic resistance.

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Tufts University School of Medicine Dean and Levy CIMAR Founding Director Helen Boucher, MD, joined congressional policymakers, federal policymakers, and other stakeholders interested in addressing drug-resistant infections and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) for an expert panel discussion at Duke University. The panel discussed topics including the current and future threat of drug-resistant infections and antimicrobial resistance, market uncertainties that complicate antimicrobial development and commercialization, and existing and proposed incentives for novel antimicrobials, including the PASTEUR Act.

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The Levy CIMAR hosted 73 students from Boston-area Brockton High School last week for a scientific poster session where the students presented their unique findings after surveilling antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bugs in their own backyards and around Brockton, and culturing them in the lab. The findings the students presented are part of the Tiny Earth project, a research course originally designed by University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty for college students to discover antibiotics from soil bacteria. Brockton is the first public high school in the country to adopt the curriculum.

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As student researchers in Lab Science Investigations: Antimicrobial Resistance, high schoolers will have a uniquely immersive experience with the One Health approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment. In the case of AMR, excessive use of antibiotics in agriculture, animals, and people, all contribute to this problem.. To address this, as part of the STEM Research Institute, students will hear perspectives from experts in many fields and will work with laboratory research techniques used by engineers, social scientists, biomedical scientists, veterinarians, physicians, drug developers, epidemiologists, healthcare policy experts, and environmental scientists, who work together at the Tufts Levy Center for Integrated Management of Antimicrobial Resistance (CIMAR).

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The Levy CIMAR has been awarded a $5.15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to construct a new biomedical research facility in the Biomedical Research and Public Health Building on the Tufts Health Sciences campus in Boston. The Laboratory for Combinatorial Drug Regimen Design for Resistant and Emerging Pathogens (LCDRD) will provide a modern, centralized laboratory and collaboration space for the Levy CIMAR’s multi-institutional effort to generate novel drug therapies for known and emerging pathogens resistant to current therapies. The new facility will be shared by teams of interdisciplinary researchers from seven Tufts University schools, including the School of Medicine, and Tufts Medicine, as well as collaborators from other regional and national institutions.

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Respiratory illnesses are making the rounds just in time for the holiday season. But after several years apart, families are ready to gather again. With Flu, COVID and RSV all circulating, doctors caution any gathering requires thought and preparation, CBS News reports. \u0022I think it’s really all about your tolerance for risk. There is no such thing as a risk-free gathering,\u0022 said Dr. Helen Boucher, Dean of Tufts Medical School and the Chief Academic Officer of Tufts Health. According to Dr. Boucher, the best thing you can do for your family right now is get the flu vaccine and latest COVID booster.

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Levy CIMAR Founding Director Dr. Helen Boucher, an expert in infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance, has been named the new dean of Tufts University School of Medicine. The first woman to lead the School of Medicine in its 129-year history, with this appointment Boucher builds on a 20-year career at Tufts as a clinician, professor, administrator, and researcher. She had served as the school’s dean ad interim since last summer, when she was also named chief academic officer for Tufts Medicine, which is the parent health system of Tufts Medical Center, the School of Medicine’s principal teaching-hospital affiliate.

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Antibiotics save lives, but whenever they are used, they can also contribute to the development of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) infections, making antibiotics and similar drugs ineffective against the microorganisms they were created to fight. Infections of all kinds—tuberculosis, dental infections, HIV, sexually transmitted infections, COVID-19, and more—are common in jails and prisons, making these facilities places where antibiotics are frequently prescribed. Unfortunately, sometimes antibiotics are prescribed even though they are not clinically indicated, the wrong antibiotics are prescribed, or antibiotics are prescribed for too long.

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Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University (Cummings School) is now recruiting canine patients for a clinical trial testing a 3-day antibiotic treatment for urinary tract infections (UTI). According to an organizational release, researchers in this study are conducting a randomized, placebo-controlled trial to determine if 3 days of the antibiotic amoxicillin is as effective as 7 days for the treatment of UTIs in dogs. The researchers at the Cummings School are hoping if the results verify to be effective, the new treatment course could improve antibiotic compliance, reduce the development of antibiotic-resistant UTIs, make treatment easier for owners, and save money on prescription costs. UTIs are commonly seen in dogs, especially in females.