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Organisation

Laboratory of Clinical Microbiology

Division

Lifecycle:1 Jan 1995 →  Today
Organisation profile:

Clinical bacteriology
• Study the impact of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines on pneumococcal disease epidemiology
• Next-generation sequencing (NGS) strategy by means of Illumina sequencing to characterize S. pneumoniae and M. tuberculosis strains including genotyping, serotyping, resistance, virulence detection and strain relatedness. 
• Optimization of microbiological methods for diagnosis of orthopedic implant-related infections
• Study the microbiological epidemiology and population characteristics of patients with a fracture-related infection
• Clinical mycobacteriology: applied PhD research to improve the diagnosis of tuberculosis and non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infections through the development and validation of innovative diagnostic and drug-discovery approaches.
• Applied PhD research and capacity building to contain antibiotic resistance, collaboration with ITM and international networks (MSF, WHO…). Operational research about implementation of clinical bacteriology in low-resource settings (sub-Saharan Africa), in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières France.

Clinical mycology
• Improve the diagnosis of invasive fungal infections through development and validation of biomarkers
• Improve the antifungal treatment of patients with invasive fungal infections through the study of resistance mechanisms and participation to clinical trials of new antifungal drugs
Infection control

Infection control
• Integrated infection control strategies: applied PhD and post-doctoral research to improve active case-finding, high-throughput screening, public communication and policy-making in the context of COVID-19 and tuberculosis.
• Infection Control in Low Resource Settings: applied PhD research and International Training Program Hospital Infection Control and Prevention, collaboration with UZ Leuven Hospital Infection Control as well as the Flemish Red Cross. Study of the hospital environment as a reservoir for clinically relevant multidrug-resistant bacteria and bacterial contamination of blood products in Central Africa (conducted in DR Congo and Burkina Faso).

Keywords:Mycobacteria, Fracture related infection, Pneumococci, Drug Development, Public health, Mycology
Disciplines:Microbiology, Public health care