IUSTI Canada Webinar Series | Série de webinaires de l’UIITS Canada

Using Genomic Tools to Understand the Evolution of Resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Thursday, April 9th, 2026 | 12-1pm EST

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is one of the top antimicrobial resistant threats according to the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control, with resistance developing to all classes of antibiotics used to treat this infection. Genomic applications offer new ways of understanding the emergence of resistance in N. gonorrhoeae, including understanding longer term evolutionary patterns of N. gonorrhoeae, the role of sexual networks locally and internationally and the spread of resistant clones, and the real time impact of doxy-PEP on patterns and selection of resistance in N. gonorrhoeae. This talk will highlight these developments and describe possible future genomic tools to continue to preserve existing antimicrobials for gonorrhea infections.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_P-W90QyeQqGvLX2Z13CgZg

About the Speaker

SPEAKER: Dr. Vanessa Allen, MDCM, MPH

Dr. Vanessa Allen is Interim Chief of Microbiology and an Infectious Diseases Physician at Sinai Health/ University Health Network, and Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She served as Chief of Microbiology and Laboratory Science at Public Health Ontario from 2013-2021 and has served as Medical Director of Ontario's Provincial Diagnostic Network at Ontario Health from March 2020 to December 2023.

Vanessa’s research has included the identification of rising resistance of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to the cephalosporins in Ontario and Canada in 2008-2010 (Allen VG et al AAC 2011; Martin IM et al STD 2011; Martin IM et al STD 2012), leading to efforts to better understand the clinical significance of the resistance, characterizing a high rate of clinical failure with elevated cefixime minimum inhibitory concentrations despite being considered susceptible (Allen VG et al JAMA 2013). Complementing this work, she led the development of an online interactive surveillance tool to monitor trends of N. gonorrhoeae resistance across demographic and geographic groups within Ontario, and contributed to the development of NG-STAR, an international used web-based sequence typing tool (Demczuk W et al. JCM 2017). She was inaugural co-chair of the Neisseria gonorrhoeae working group of the Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Committee of the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute from 2015-2023.

Since joining Sinai Health/ University Health Network Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Departments, she is expanding this work to focus more of the clinical aspects and microbiology of infections during pregnancy, specifically using new genomic methodologies to better diagnose and respond to emerging and re-emerging threats.

MODERATOR: Dr. Sumudu Perera

Dr Sumudu Perera is a Research Scientist at MicrobeDx Inc. Her collaborative research with the Department of Biochemistry Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Saskatchewan involves antibiotic-resistance trends, molecular epidemiology, mechanisms of resistance and point-of-care diagnosis of sexually transmitted infection pathogen N. gonorrhoeae. She is Treasurer of IUSTI-Canada.