Michael Rybak, a professor of pharmacy practice and the director of the Anti-infective Research Laboratory in Wayne State University’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, has received the American College of Clinical Pharmacy’s (ACCP) Frontiers Lecture Award.
The Therapeutic Frontiers Award is one of the most prestigious awards in pharmacy. It can be regarded as a lifetime achievement award. The award recognizes individuals who are at the leading edge of research in their fields and have made outstanding contributions to pharmacotherapeutics. Rybak, whose work focuses on infectious disease pharmacotherapy and antimicrobial resistance, was presented the award during the ACCP’s annual meeting on Oct. 23.
Rybak, who has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards, was invited to present his lecture, “Antimicrobial Combination Therapy of Life-Threatening Bacterial Infections: A Bedside to Bench Approach,” at the meeting. The lecture explored why and how some antibiotics work better in combination to combat antibiotic resistant strains, the “seesaw effect” — in which a strain of bacteria makes adjustments to become resistant to one antibiotic while becoming more susceptible to a second unrelated type of antibiotic. The key factor is to take advantage of this vulnerability by applying the most lethal antibiotic combination at the right time.
Antimicrobial resistance is a growing public health issue, particularly in urban areas like Detroit. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that antibiotic resistance causes at least 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually.
“Detroit is known internationally for harboring a lot of drug-resistant pathogens, and the resistance rates seem to be increasing. Understanding patient risk factors and how these pathogens become resistant is really the key for us to be successful here,” Rybak said. “Studying this phenomenon is a golden opportunity to make big contributions to improve the healthcare for the city of Detroit and the surrounding areas.”
To help understand and combat this resistance, improve the health of urban populations, and optimize infection management, Rybak and a team of interdisciplinary experts affiliated with Wayne State have formed the Urban Center for Antimicrobial Resistance, Discovery, Education and Stewardship (UCARDES), funded in 2015 by the President’s Research Enhancement Program.
UCARDES will examine factors that create antibiotic resistance, including health disparities, access to care, social demographics, the prescribing behaviors of physicians and more. UCARDES takes a bench-to-bedside approach, ensuring all of its projects consider both drug discovery in laboratories and a clinician’s experience in treating patients. The group includes representatives from WSU’s School of Medicine, School of Social Work, School of Nursing, the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, and the Institute of Gerontology, along with members of the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System, Oakwood/Beaumont Health and St. John’s Providence (VA).
“We’ve got a great group of scientists working together to investigate many different factors that contribute to antibiotic resistance,” Rybak said. “We’re hoping that all the collaborations and groups we’re forming can take these pilot projects and create larger, multidisciplinary groups to tackle these serious healthcare problems.”
Rybak has been with Wayne State for 36 years, and has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2003 ASHP Research Foundation Award and the 2005 ACCP Russell R. Miller Award for sustained and outstanding contributions to the literature, the Wayne State University Distinguished Alumni Award, the Wayne State University Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Award, the R.W. Johnson Research Institute Fellowship Award, the Merck Foundation Fellowship Award, and the Wayne State University Academic Achievement Award for Natural Sciences, among many others. Rybak has also been elected as a fellow for ACCP and the Infectious Diseases Society of America and is a founding member, past board member, and past president of the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the journal Infectious Diseases and Therapy, Infectious Diseases Associate Editor for Pharmacotherapy and has served as an editorial board member of Critical Reviews in Microbiology since 2008. At the time of his nomination, Rybak had published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 16 book chapters and countless scientific abstracts.