Annual Report (2009/2010) of the Canadian Antimicrobial Resistance Alliance (CARA)
CARA is headquartered in the Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba. Research collaboration is extensive in Manitoba, across Canada with CARA network of ~25 sites in 8 of 10 provinces. Collaboration extends to sites in the US.
The official website of CARA is
In 2009/2010 CARA presented 35 ICAAC/IDSA/ICC/ASM/CACMIC/AMMI abstracts and published ~20 papers but the highlite was the publication of a supplement in the Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology (CJIDMM) in 2009.
The supplement was focused on CARA’s national surveillance study assessing antimicrobial resistance in Canadian hospitals-CANWARD.
Other highlites for CARA include: the growing participation of our ID/MM fellows (eg. Drs. Andrew Walkty (now on staff and active research member, Philippe Lagace-Wiens (now on staff and active research member), Oscar Larios and Sergio Fanella, Jared Bullard); the strong and growing collaboration with Dr. Mike Mulvey’s group at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML); the full integration of Dr.James Karlowsky back into our research group; the quality of research and awards obtained by our graduate students (Trish Baudry-Simner and Aleksandra Wierzbowski) and BSc med student (Kristjan Thompson); bringing Dr.Heather Adam back to Winnipeg (after finishing her 3 year post-doc in Toronto July 2009) as a microbiologist at DSM and researcher within CARA; as mentioned above, the success of our national surveillance study (CANWARD 2007 – present) assessing antimicrobial resistance in Canadian hospitals (published supplement in Can J Infect Dis Med Micro 2009); CARA’s participation in the publication of the Canadian practice guidelines for surgical intra-abdominal infections; hosting visiting professor’s including Drs. Patrice Courvalin, Johann Pitout and Gerry Wright; the strong collaboration with Dr Alfred Gin and IMS Canada regarding antimicrobial usage in Canada; the collaboration with Drs.Sheryl Zelenitsky, Robert Ariano, Ayman Noreddin (Hampton Univ) and David Nicolau (Hartford hospital) regarding antimicrobial pharmacodynamics/Monte Carlo simulations; the growing collaboration with Cangene Corp/Richardson nutriceuticals in Winnipeg; the productive (4 patents) collaboration with Dr.Frank Schweizer (chemist at the Fort Garry campus) focusing on the discovery/developmentof aminoglycoside fusion antibiotics; and the growing success of our official website
A huge thank you to Drs. Joanne Embree, Ethan Rubinstein, Amin Kabani, Frank Plummer and Alan Ronald for their support and encouragement.
Submitted August 11, 2010 by George G. Zhanel, Research Director of CARA