COMBACTE-MAGNET Scientific Board Meeting

The meeting was chaired by Mark Esser, Vice President and Head of Microbial Sciences, Astrazeneca. Since the retirement of Alexey Ruzin, Mark has taken over his duties. He pointed out the licensing agreement with Aridis Pharmaceuticals and the monoclonal antibody candidate, suvratoxumab. Mark wished them the best of luck and recommended that everyone stay tuned for more good news coming from the Aridis team.

Jesus Rodriguez Bano noted that the next EPI-Net project meeting will be in Seville on the third and fourth of December. This will be a hybrid meeting with 83 confirmed participants from 22 countries. In this meeting key EPI-Net outputs will be presented, and an update will be given on the transition of EPI-Net into Ecraid. The One Health Consensus Initiative will be highlighted during these two days. In addition, an epidemiology of infectious diseases workshop (hybrid) will be held in Bologna between 29 November and 3 December 2021.

Much work has been completed by the different study teams and there is still a lot of work in progress. Professor Surbhi Malhotra pointed out that she really needs the additional year to finish all of the ongoing work. Over the last months several manuscripts have been published or are already circulated and waiting for approval. These published articles can be found on our website.

The meeting ended with a short discussion and a look back at the past several years. Notes were made about what worked well and what could be done differently. Ecraid was briefly discussed as some of the COMBACTE networks will transition into Ecraid.

COMBACTE-MAGNET

COMBACTE-MAGNET focuses on the most vulnerable category of patients: those who are critically ill and are being treated in intensive care units. It aims to increase our understanding of the needs of these patients and doctors and use that knowledge to advance the development of well-targeted, life-saving treatments.