LAB-Net Activities in EURECA’s Final Stages

Between May 2016 and November 2018, the EURECA (EUropean prospective cohort study on Enterobacteriaceae showing REsistance to CArbapenems) study has recruited a total of 2266 patients with carbapenem-resistant and carbapenem-susceptible infections from 50 hospitals in 11 countries across Europe.

A total of 1090 CRE and CRAB clinical isolates were collected in the 50 participating laboratories. All isolates were transferred during the study and were stored at the central laboratory at the University of Antwerp. Overall, 1037 (95%) of these were phenotypically confirmed as carbapenem-resistant, highlighting the excellent performance of the local laboratories. The CRE isolates were then dispatched to the EURECA research partner laboratories for additional testing and analysis, namely:

• Full range determination of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) by broth microdilution (SERMAS, Health service institute in Madrid, Spain);
• Pathogenicity study in a Galleria mellonella model (University of Cardiff, UK); and
• Whole-genome sequencing of CRE isolates (University of Freiburg, Germany).

The CRAB isolates were sequenced at the central laboratory at the University of Antwerp.

The EURECA study has now entered its final stage. As of April 1^st 2020, the testing of isolates is almost completed while work on data cleaning and case matching is still running in the background. In the next few months, all EURECA partners will finalize the data analysis and summarize the most important findings of the study. Several scientific publications will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals by the end of this year.

ABOUT EURECA

EURECA is part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)-funded COMBACTE-CARE project and aimed to identify the predictors of negative outcomes and risk factors in patients with pneumonia, intra-abdominal, complicated urinary tract and bloodstream infections caused by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and by Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB).

ABOUT LAB-NET

LAB-Net, the laboratory network within COMBACTE, consists of routine diagnostic laboratories, specialized research laboratories, and a central coordinating laboratory based at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Its overarching objective is to establish, train, and maintain a high-quality geographically representative European COMBACTE laboratory network to support antibacterial drug development via various clinical trials. LAB-Net is an indispensable part of COMBACTE and fully complementary to the hospital network, CLIN-Net.