Photonic Diagnosis, Monitoring, Prevention, and Treatment of Infections and Inflammatory Diseases 2025

Infectious diseases remain a major contributor to global mortality rates. For example, the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the recent global pandemic, causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus -2 (SARS CoV-2), has devastated the world resulting in several million infections and close to five million deaths till late October 2021. Shockingly, more than 95% of deaths caused by infections are due to the lack of proper diagnosis and treatment. A definite diagnosis of infections can only be obtained by culture and/or molecular detection, which often requires tissue biopsy. This invasive diagnostic procedure takes many hours or even several days to yield an answer, and sometimes, it is not even possible to obtain a representative biopsy. The inability of physicians to characterize infections at the point of care has led to the wide overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics and, subsequently, the development of antibiotic resistance by pathogens. The rise of antibiotic resistance has furthermore exponentially complicated the choice of treatment. Many physicians are concerned that several infections may soon be untreatable. In 2020, the United States government announced the National Action for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, 2020-2025, in which it is noted that new diagnostics and therapeutics are urgently needed to combat emerging and reemerging antibiotic-resistant pathogens. On the global level, the G20 heads of state and government decided in 2017 to create a joint collaboration platform - the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Development Hub, or Global AMR R&D Hub.

In the area of innovative and antibiotic diagnostic and non-antibiotic therapeutic approaches, photonic (optics and light-based) technologies are prominent. Rapid, accurate, and noninvasive infection diagnosis using photonic strategies such as Raman and infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, and plasmonics augmented with molecular technologies can play critical roles by influencing treatment during the critical initial window (< 3 hours) and saving many lives.

Once diagnosed, photonic antimicrobial therapies such as antimicrobial photodynamic therapy, antimicrobial blue light, ultraviolet C radiation, photocatalytic antimicrobial therapy, and light-based vaccines offer significant benefits. Their ability to eliminate pathogens independent of antibiotic resistance and the low likelihood that pathogens will develop resistance due to the nature of relatively nonspecific targets make them particularly attractive. Monitoring the response to antimicrobial therapy allows therapeutic approaches to be tailored based on individual patient responses, ultimately leading to personalized medicine.

The conference emphasizes photonic diagnostic and therapeutic techniques for infections and inflammatory diseases. The conference aims to solicit technical and scientific papers that present advanced photonic diagnostic, monitoring, prevention, and therapeutic technologies that push beyond the current state-of-the-art in basic science and clinical practice. These include, but are not limited to:

Photonic diagnosis and monitoring of infections and inflammatory diseases

• Novel optical biosensors for rapid point-of-care identification of infections and Inflammatory diseases
• Pathogen-targeted optical imaging
• Optical microscopy for bacterial morphology and spectral fingerprint analysis for detecting infectious diseases
• Automated image analysis of bacterial morphology and spectral fingerprint analysis for characterizing antimicrobial susceptibility
• Rapid detection of drug resistance via enzyme-activated fluorescence detection
• Multiphoton microscopy for detecting dynamics of immune cell responses to infections
• Confocal microscopy for detecting pathogen-host interactions
• Molecular imaging of infections and inflammatory diseases
• Photoacoustic imaging of infections and inflammatory diseases
• Magnetic resonance imaging of infections and inflammatory diseases
• Positron emission tomography scanning for infections and inflammatory diseases
• Hyperspectral Imaging for mapping infectious diseases
• Multimodal approaches for visualizing infections and inflammation
• Preclinical bioluminescence imaging of infectious diseases in animal models
• Photonic detection of the systemic response to infections
• Photonic monitoring of response to antimicrobial therapy
• Artificial intelligence in diagnostic imaging of infections and inflammatory diseases
• Photonic methods and technologies for the diagnosis of infections and inflammatory diseases in low-resource settings
• AI supported systems for imaging diagnosis of infections and inflammatory diseases

Photonic prevention and treatment of infections and inflammatory diseases

• Inactivation of pathogens (bacteria, mycobacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites) using photonic approaches (antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation, antimicrobial blue light, ultraviolet irradiation, photocatalytic antimicrobial therapy, etc.)
• Photonic-based antimicrobial therapy
• Antimicrobial effectiveness of photocatalysts
• Combined antimicrobial therapies using photonic approaches and other antimicrobials.
• Photonic vaccination for the control of infections and inflammatory diseases
• Optogenetics in bacteria
• Disinfection using light-based approaches
• Inactivation of virulence factors of pathogens using photonic approaches
• Mechanism of action of photonic-based antimicrobial approaches
• Development of novel photosensitizers in antimicrobial photodynamic therapy
• Light delivery in antimicrobial light-based therapy
• Drug delivery in antimicrobial photodynamic therapy
• Light-triggered antimicrobial drug delivery
• Potential development of light-resistance by pathogenic microbes
• Nanotechnology and photonic-based antimicrobial therapy
• Toxicity of photonic-based antimicrobial therapy (e.g., cytotoxicity, genotoxicity) to the host cells and tissues.