Editorial [Hot topic: Anti-Infective Agents in Medicinal Chemistry- Hot Topic: Fall of 2009 (Guest Editor: Paul B. Savage)]

Every year the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) meets in the Fall, to chronicle and describe the state-of-the-art in infectious diseases and chemotherapy, with the hope of highlighting new agents that look promising to treat Mankind's most dreaded pathogens. Unfortunately, this year fewer new agents are being described, although the clinicians will be out in full force, looking for agents and methods with which to treat their patients. Fortunately, the motivations and efforts of drug-discovery researchers and medicinal chemists are still in full force too, looking for novel agents and chemicals with which to treat bacterial and otherwise diseases, some of which are chronicled here, in the current Hot Topic: Newer Agents Against Biofilms, Fungi, Bacteria and Parasites. Our Guest Editor, Dr. Paul Savage of Brigham Young University, comments on the first two papers in the segment on Biofilms, and describes in detail with his colleagues their own research using the ceragenins and their derivatives against biofilm formation, in Activities of Ceragenin CSA-13 Against Biofilms in an In Vitro Model of Catheter Decolonization. This review by Dr. Savage and his colleagues shows that scaffolds other than typically encountered in chemotherapy can be used to affect biofilm formation in medical devices, a common source of potential infection. Small molecule approaches toward the non-microbicidal modulation of bacterial biofilm growth and maintenance-Justin J. Richards and Christian Melander- North Carolina State University.