The 1st Medical Mycology Training Network (MMTN) meeting

1st MMTN held to improve outcomes in medical mycoses 

 

The Medical Mycology Training Network (MMTN) series are meetings specially designed by the Asia Fungal Working Group (AFWG) to provide essential knowledge and practical experience in medical mycoses, ultimately helping to improve patient outcomes across the Asia-Pacific region. The first-ever regional MMTN meeting was held on December 4-6, 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan, and turned out to be a successful endeavor. The meeting was a 3-day hands-on workshop on practical skills in the identification and diagnosis of medical mycoses for a select group of microbiologists and infectious disease physicians from Asia Pacific.

Hosted by the Taiwan Infectious Diseases Society (TIDS) and supported by an independent educational grant from Pfizer, MMTN gathered a multinational faculty of experts to support a daily training program that integrated lecture-based theory sessions with hands-on laboratory practicals. The invited speakers/facilitators included Professor David Ellis (Australia), Dr Monica Slavin (Australia), Dr Sharon Chen (Australia), and Professor Patrick Woo (Hong Kong), and AFWG Board members Professor Arunaloke Chakrabarti (India), Dr Tan Ban Hock (Singapore), Professor Yee-Chun Chen (Taiwan), Professor Ruoyu Li (China), Dr Atul Patel (India), Dr Pei-Lun Sun (Taiwan), Dr Tan Ai Ling (Singapore) and Professor Zhengyin Liu (China).

 

The comprehensive agenda included topics such as:

 

• Introduction to medical mycology and the classification of fungi
• Identification of zygomycetes, yeasts and hyphomycetes
• Epidemiology (prospective surveillance of candidemia and other invasive fungal infections)
• Rapid diagnostics
• Molecular identification of fungi
• Diagnosis and management of cryptococcosis
• Antifungal susceptibility testing
• Overview of antifungal agents, targets and mechanisms of resistance
• Dimorphic mycoses from Asia
• Uncommon difficult infections caused by Scedosporium, Fusarium, etc
• Histopathology (direct microscopy)

 

Twenty participants were privileged to attend the pilot event; this group was composed of professionals from China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan. All in all, the attendees were grateful and gave positive feedback on the “excellent” experience, and showed interest in recommending MMTN to their colleagues. Most of the participants shared that the topics were informative and relevant, and were confident that what they learned at the meeting could be applied to their daily duties. Thanks to the efforts of AFWG and TIDS, the first MMTN was a resounding success, and provided a solid framework and exciting jump-off point for future MMTNs.