CAG Novel strategies to diagnose and treat bacterial infections (BACINFECT)

The CAG Novel Strategies to Diagnose and Treat Bacterial Infections (BACINFECT) strives to reduce mortality rates among patients with infectious diseases through improved diagnostics and treatment.

Vital to successful suppression of many infections is detection at an early stage, fast diagnostics and correct treatment. This CAG collaboration will shed light on the underlying causes of unsuccessful diagnostics and therapy leading to continued infection, and it will identify infection markers capable of predicting the outcome of an infection. Moreover, the CAG will develop improved infection models imitating the tissue that infections are attracted to. The research is supplemented with new biobanks holding clinical isolates from infected patients and affiliated databases containing genomic, phenotypical and clinical data.

Bacterial infections become more and more difficult to treat with antibiotics, and according to the WHO, infectious diseases will constitute a greater health risk than cancer a few decades from now. Among other things, this is the result of effective spread of pathogenic bacteria due to extensive international travel, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, increasing numbers of senior citizens and patients with a weak immune system and people suffering from lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, obesity and smoking.

It is often claimed that in order to fight multi-resistant bacteria we need to find new antibiotics to replace the ones who no longer have an effect on resistant bacteria. The problem is more complex than that, though. New research in antibiotic resistance conducted by members of the CAG BACINFECT, among others, shows that there are several reasons why infections often survive treatment and develop into continued or even chronic infections.

Research in BACINFECT is conducted by clinicians and researchers together across universities and hospitals. Clinical problems are translated into biological questions which may be addressed and answered and thus retranslated into clinical solutions, improving diagnostics and therapy. The strong interdisciplinary consortium has expertise within clinical and molecular microbiology, cell biology, bioinformatics and in particular within relevant types of bacterial infections.

Training and Competency Development

Members of BACINFECT ensure, via their teaching activities in universities and hospitals, that new knowledge from the CAG is integrated into the teaching curriculum of pre-graduate students, just as more specialised research knowledge will be shared with PhD students and postdocs.