Infectious disease 2000: drug resistance and new drugs

40th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) was held in Toronto on 17-20 September 2000. It attracted thousands of delegates from industry and academia and covered, in over 2300 oral and poster presentations, topics ranging from microbial pathogenesis to infection control, vaccines, antibiotic resistance and new antimicrobial agents. Summarized here are highlights on microbial resistance and agents in clinical and preclinical development. Copyright 2000 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.