For quite some time now, the lack of new antibacterials has been broadly recognized as a major unmet medical need. To successfully tackle antibacterial resistance, screening for novel targets and developing new strategies to interfere with bacteria are just as important as other challenges, including predicting toxicology, selectivity, resistance, permeability and pk of a new lead, and creating new models for optimization of leads and compounds. This conference is designed to bring together executive level scientists from the academic, pharmaceutical and biotech areas to discuss progress, novel insight, lessons learned and current bottlenecks.