Translational Research on Antimicrobial resistance and Community-acquired infections in Europe (TRACE)

NEWS

Click on the first issue of TRACE News back-to-back to the last issue of GRACE News

Summary

Uncertainties in infectious disease management have resulted in prescriptive promiscuity, which largely explains the escalating antibiotic resistance of common bacterial respiratory pathogens in the community. Technologies and solutions are available to address these issues, and the individual areas of expertise do exist in Europe, but the problem is in integrating these.
Therefore, TRACE (Translational Research on Antimicrobial resistance and Community-acquired infections in Europe) was launched on Thursday June 16 2011, in Antwerp, supported by ESF (European Science Foundation), 17 GRACE (Genomics to combat Resistance against Antibiotics in Community-acquired LRTI in Europe;www.grace-lrti.org) and 5 other partners. TRACE aims to consolidate the expertise integrated in several research programmes, in particular within the GRACE Network of Excellence, beyond EC funding, and to apply it to steer ongoing and to deploy new research activities, and to disseminate its results.
GRACE has been a unique and successful Network of Excellence encompassing 20 Primary Care Networks in 15 EU countries, human and microbial genomics, collaboration with the major infectious disease and primary care societies, SME’s, integrated by means of state-of-the-art ICT. The GRACE concept serves as a model for TRACE aiming to complement the ongoing activities substantially.
TRACE will produce a brochure, a website and a newsletter. To disseminate the results of GRACE, but also of other EU funded projects like CHAMP (www.champ-antibiotics.org) and HAPPY AUDIT (www.happyaudit.org) represented by their coordinators in TRACE, train-the-trainer courses will be organised. For that purpose, we are also very grateful that the European Respiratory Society (ERS; www.ersnet.org) is willing to maintain the GRACE e-learning platform (www.grace-edut.org), established  with the support of both the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Europe (ESCMID; www.escmid.org) and ERS. In addition, TRACE will facilitate the development of new translational research applications and sustain the expertise in this field.
Together with our partners in 16 EU countries, and our partners in Australia and Hong Kong, we truly hope that TRACE will succeed in sustaining the translational research on antimicrobial resistance and community-acquired infections in Europe and beyond, and in providing compelling evidence for the wisdom of further investment in Networks of Excellence in Europe.


Herman Goossens, Coordinator (Chair)
Samuel Coenen, Manager 

Duration

5 years, from June 2011 to June 2016 (09-RNP-053)