Excellence Awardee 2013


Patrice Nordmann, Paris, France

Patrice Nordmann,Paris, France

Patrice Nordmann currently holds a professorship in Clinical Microbiology and holds the following positions in Paris, France:
• Chief of the Department of Bacteriology, Virology, Parasitology, and Hygiene, Hospital Bicêtre, Assistance-Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France
• Head and founder of the research unit INSERM U914 ‘Emerging Resistance to Antibiotics’, South-Paris Medical School, South-Paris University (University Paris XI) and INSERM (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France
• Head of the Associated National Reference Center for Antibiotic Resistance in France (since 2012). At the West-Paris Medical School, University Paris V, he earned his degree in Medicine, completing his residency in 1988. From 1988 to 1993 he was professionally active at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland, working on transposition. In 1993 he earned his PhD in the area of genetics of bacteria and phages at the University Paris VII and received his accreditation there one year later. Working on many complementary aspects of emerging antibiotic resistance in bacteria, he has received several molecular genetics and clinical microbiology awards from the American Society for Microbiology, the French National Research Foundation and, more recently, from the French National Academy of Sciences.

At ECCMID 2013 he gave his recipient's lecture: ‘Emerging Resistance in Gram- Negative Rods; a State of Emergency’.

Research Interests
Over the years Patrice has gained extensive knowledge of antibiotic resistance, from fundamental research to clinical applications.
His group works on the genetics, biochemistry and molecular epidemiology of emerging resistance determinants
(mostly in Gram negative rods, i.e. Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii) including
the evaluation of novel antibiotic molecules. He is particularly interested in emerging antibiotic resistant traits that are spreading,
most recently in carbapenemases. His group identified the fi rst carbapenemases in Enterobacteriaceae and the regulation of
their expression and contributed recently to the report on the worldwide spread of OXA-48 and NDM producers. The group has also established an informal international network comprising more than thirty microbiology labs worldwide to study emerging sources of antibiotic resistance collaboratively. He has identifi ed several natural reservoirs of antibiotic resistant genes and was the fi rst to reproduce gene mobility to human pathogens (CTX-M, Enterobacteriaceae). Identifi cation of totally novel genetic elements as vectors of antibiotic resistant genes and antibiotic resistant traits has been performed extensively. Patrice has recently developed novel rapid diagnostic techniques to detect the source of broad-spectrum resistance (ESBLs, carbapenemases) emerging in Gram negatives that will contribute to the control of their spread worldwide.