The 4th Medical Mycology Training Network (MMTN) meeting
4th MMTN was a successful event in medical mycology
The 4th Medical Mycology Training Network (MMTN) organized by the Asia Fungal Working Group (AFWG) was held on February 22-23, 2014 in Penang, Malaysia. It featured a series of plenary lectures, practice-focused workshops, challenging case discussions, and parallel tracks of practical and clinical sessions covering the most relevant topics in medical mycology. The roundtable setup, with problem-based learning and ample time for discussion, ensured many opportunities to interact with top experts and peers in the region.
Keeping in tradition with previous MMTNs, the 4th MMTN invited several international experts to serve as speakers/facilitators at the event. For this MMTN, Professor David Ellis (Australia), Professor Claudio Viscoli (Italy), Professor Deborah Marriott (Australia), Professor Yok-Lam Kwong (Hong Kong) and Dr Lie Khie Chen (Indonesia) were plenary speakers and/or facilitated some of the clinical and practical workshops. The AFWG Board members who took part in the event were Professor Arunaloke Chakrabarti (India), Dr Tan Ban Hock (Singapore), Dr Tan Ai Ling (Singapore), Professor Yee-Chun Chen (Taiwan), Dr Pei-Lun Sun (Taiwan), Dr Porpon Rotjanapan (Thailand), Dr Ariya Chindamporn (Thailand), Professor Zhengyin Liu (China), Professor Ruoyu Li (China), Dr Atul Patel (India) and Dr Mitzi Chua (Philippines).
The plenary sessions and workshops tackled topics such as:
- Epidemiological trends and emerging threats in fungal infections
- Endemic fungi in Asia
- Integrated care pathways for invasive fungal infection (IFI)
- Challenges in IFI management in non-traditional hosts
- IFI in solid organ transplant recipients: Strategies and the role of biomarkers
- Pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics and therapeutic drug monitoring
- IFI in HIV patients
- Advances in non–culture-based diagnostics
- Antifungal susceptibility testing
The 4th MMTN hosted 65 participants from China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. They agreed that the meeting was excellent and offered useful and up-to-date information on the diagnosis and management of fungal infections, which could help improve their daily practice.