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The XV National Congress of Bulgarian Microbiologists with international participation was held in Bulgaria in the city of Koprivshtitsa from October 5 to 8, 2022. These congresses are held every 4 years and are organized by The Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The congress was dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Pasteur and the 75th anniversary of the Institute of Microbiology of BAS. The Bulgarian Society for Microbiology is a member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria and at the same time is a collective member of the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS).

The congress was led by the Chairman of the Bulgarian Society of Microbiology, Academician Professor Angel Galabov. Oral and poster presentations were presented by more than 150 scientists, graduate students and students from Bulgaria and other countries, including Russia, England, Turkey, Romania, Greece, Italy and others. The Congress sessions were as follows: Covid-19, General and Applied Microbiology, Medical Microbiology, Veterinary Microbiology, Environment, Virology, Food Microbiology, Infectious Immunology.

The guests of the Congress were members of the steering boards of FEMS (Colin Harwood), European Society of Mycobacteriology (Igor Mokrousov), Chairman of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria (Diana Petkova), President of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (Eliora Ron).

Head of the laboratory of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics of St. Petersburg Pasteur Institute Dr Igor Mokrousov presided the section on medical microbiology and delivered a plenary lecture "Epidemic and endemic clusters of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Russia: pathobiology and phylogeography". Senior researcher of the same laboratory Dr Anna Vyazovaya presented a report "Primary multidrug resistance and major clusters of the epidemiologically significant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Beijing genotype in Northwest Russia". The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant 19-14-00013).

Igor Mokrousov and Anna Vyazovaya visited the Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology and the Institute of Organic Chemistry with center of Phytochemistry of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. A meeting was held at the Institute of Microbiology with the Director of the Institute Prof. Penka Petrova, the results of successful continuous cooperation in the field of tuberculosis since 2004 within the framework of multilateral and bilateral projects, including the International Network of Pasteur Institutes, were discussed. Igor Mokrousov is a member of the International Scientific Council of the Institute since 2011. During the visit to the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Mycobacteria (Head, Dr. Violeta Valcheva) and the Laboratory of Organic Synthesis and Stereochemistry (PI, Dr. Georgi Dobrikov), the directions of new projects for the development of anti-tuberculosis drugs, as well as joint publications, were discussed. In 2022, three collaborative articles were published in the high-level international journals (BMC Veterinary Medicine/Springer Nature; ChemistrySelect/Wiley; Pharmaceuticals/MDPI).

The Congress website: https://microbio2022.bg/

The Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology website: https://microbio.bas.bg/en/

Institute of Organic Chemistry with Centre of Phytochemistry website: https://www.orgchm.bas.bg/EN/index_en.html