Dr. Simin Aysel Florescu: “We liked the multilevel, international aspect of COMBACTE”

Dr. Simin Aysel Florescu is Medical Director at the Clinical Hospital of Infectious and Tropical Diseases ‘Dr. Victor Babeş’ in Bucharest, Romania. Dr. Florescu shares her passion for infectious diseases and talks about her motivation in joining the COMBACTE project.

Together with her team of 10 doctors and nurses, Dr. Florescu is participating in COMBACTE-NET’s ANTICIPATE and COMBACTE-CARE’s EURECA studies.

Why did you choose infectious diseases as your field of work?

“I like it a lot, especially because it is one of the specialties where you can immediately see the results, such as the way patients respond to different treatments. Infectious diseases affects many people, and unfortunately increasingly spreading across other healthcare disciplines.”

How long have you been working as an infectious disease doctor?

“Since 1994, when I was doing my residency. The decisive moment came during the 5^th year of my residency when I realized that infectious diseases is a very interesting field to pursue. I have been working at ‘Dr. Victor Babeş’ Hospital for about 22 years.”

How did you find out about COMBACTE?

“News travels fast in the academic field when it comes to emerging projects and platforms. At the same time working with clinical studies for a long time provides access to everything that’s going on in this field. COMBACTE is part of both worlds: it brings together the academic world and the industry in the field of clinical studies.”

What motivated you to take part in this project?

“First and foremost this is a European project in which renowned academia are taking part. The scientific, development, and research part of this project are very well represented, and more vast than researching a single drug or a single disease. We liked the multilevel, international side of it too. For us it’s important to be present in these projects at a European level. It was the driving force of joining this network.

We have gradually joined the studies in COMBACTE, such as EURECA and ANTICIPATE  and are glad to have such a large participation in these studies with our team from the ‘Dr. Victor Babeș’ Hospital.”

What is your experience with the studies you are participating in?

“They all pose different levels of difficulty when it comes to recruitment. EURECA is very complex, while ANTICIPATE is somewhere in between, perhaps due to our patients’ limited capacity to hold daily journals. What is important however is that we are making progress in all these studies, and we are happy to be part of them.”

In January 2017 the CLIN-Net and LAB-Net teams visited hospitals in Bucharest, amongst which the ‘Dr. Victor Babeș’ Clinical Hospital. You took part in the general investigators meeting that was held during this visit.

“Indeed. It was a very instructive and informative meeting where many study particulars were clarified and discussed.

We were happy to show them around our laboratory, and see that they enjoyed the visit. We have 10 doctors and more than 15 laboratory personnel working in the lab. Our laboratory at ‘Dr. Victor Babeş’ helps other hospitals too, especially for the microbiology diagnosis and the molecular biology techniques.”

Will you participate in more COMBACTE studies in the future?

“Absolutely. We are more than happy to participate in as many studies as we can.”

What is your message to the COMBACTE network?

“Team work is essential in finalizing our studies and reaching our goal. Collaboration and cooperation represent a key part of this project. To us it means a lot to be part of and actively participate in the COMBACTE network.”