Seeking to reduce antibiotic resistance with the right treatment at the right time
Pontus Naucler is hoping to improve the treatment of severe infections while reducing the development of antibiotic resistance by combining data from registries and medical records with AI and clinical studies to make antibiotic treatments more precise. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 9 October.
Text: Karin Tideström, for KI’s installation ceremony booklet 2025
What are you researching?
“I’m researching how to give the right antibiotics to the right patients at the right time. My aim is to improve the diagnosis and treatment of serious infectious diseases like sepsis, pneumonia and hospital-acquired infections. At the same time, we want to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and reduce the development of antibiotic resistance.”
Why is this important?
“The WHO estimates that antibiotic resistance causes an annual 700,000 fatalities, a number that is in danger of rising to 10 million by 2050. The incorrect use of antibiotics is accelerating the trend, necessitating better strategies for treating serious infections in order both to improve patient survival rates and to reduce the development of resistance.”
How are you going about this?
“We’re studying data from medical records, national registers and research databases and then using traditional epidemiology and AI to analyse how different treatments work. We’re also doing clinical research with regional and national networks in Sweden and Europe to test new treatment strategies and methods, and developing algorithms able to detect and monitor healthcare-associated infections and to provide guidance on the use of antibiotics.”
How do you hope the results of your research will be used?
“We want our research results to be of use to healthcare professionals through updated guidelines and the implementation of new digital tools that will help them to prevent and monitor acute infections and make better decisions on what treatments to administer.”
About Pontus Naucler
Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Department of Medicine, Solna
Pontus Naucler was born in 1978 in Lund, where he trained as a doctor, earning his PhD in 2007 with a thesis on how the human papillomavirus increases the risk of cervical cancer. He was made senior lecture at Karolinska Institutet in 2022 and chairs the steering committee for the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) quality register and the ACTION Sweden network. He also sits on the coordinating committee for the European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases (ECRAID) and is academic coordinator for KI’s collaborative partnerships with Brazil. Pontus Naucler was appointed Professor at Karolinska Institutet on 1 January 2025.