Melbourne Mycology Meeting - Written by Harshini Weerasinghe

Held as a collaborative local meeting between Mycology laboratories in Victoria

The first in-person Melbourne Mycology meeting since 2019 was held on Friday the 4th of August 2023 at the University of Melbourne. The Meeting aimed to promote communication and collaboration between labs that work on fungal infections across Victoria and was well attended by lab  heads, early and mid career researchers and Masters and PhD students from each of these labs. For this meeting we had 8 fantastic speakers from numerous institutes whose expertise spanned many areas of fungal biology including plant, medical and clinical mycology. We were lucky enough to have a keynote presentation on research focussing on developing strategies to prevent and treat life threatening Candida albicans infection by Dr Megan Lenardon from the University of New South Wales, who flew in all the way from Sydney to join us on the day. Presentations on the day included fascinating talks on how metabolism affects the pathogenicity of human fungal pathogen Candida albicans and the investigation of natural compounds as potent alternate antifungal strategies as well as talks on how agricultural fungal pathogen Leptospheria maculans causes devastating economic damage and crop loss and the innovative strategies being implemented to mitigate these negative effects.

Following a catered lunch sponsored by ASM, the afternoon session switched gears with talks on using cool tools to visualise and learn about fungal infection live as they happen and how omics approaches can be used to track developing drug resistance in disease causing fungi. The final talk of the day was delivered by Professor Orla Morrissey from Monash University on the current challenges and future perspectives of clinical mycology and the intersection of clinical research with the laboratory. This led to a time of open discussion on strategies to increase the visibility of medical and agricultural mycology research not just amongst the clinical community but also in public forums. There was a key emphasis on developing ways for laboratory researchers to get involved in Clinical conferences, meetings, and strategic planning, so that both communities could draw upon a shared knowledge base. The meeting was a great success and provided valuable insights and networking opportunities for the community across diverse mycological areas.