Funded by ISIDORe’s (Integrated Services For Infectious Diseases Outbreak Research) Joint Research Activities Programme 2023-2025, CENTAUR is creating and implementing tools to establish genotyping schemas suitable for bacterial pathogens, including a hypothetical bacterial pathogen X, with the potential to assist in designing prevention and therapeutic strategies.
We are thrilled to share the launch of CENTAUR (Creating and refining whole-genome and core-genome typing schemas for pathogen surveillance), a new consortium coordinated by Instituto De Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM, member of EATRIS), and with the participation of Institut Pasteur (IP from MIRRI) and Instituto Nacional De Saude Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA from ERINHA). This initiative aims to address the limitations of existing tools and create new tools allowing the rapid and efficient creation and validation of high-quality wg/cgMLST schemas for relevant bacterial pathogens, including any bacterial pathogen X.
Genomic discrimination has transformed surveillance, tracking, and outbreak investigations of microbial pathogens, enabling the identification of transmission chains and new variants. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic increased access to high-throughput sequencing, highlighting genomics’ benefits in clinical microbiology and public health. Despite bacterial pathogens’ lesser prominence, they pose significant health risks. However, barriers to using bacterial genomics persist due to complex, pathogen-specific tools. Gene-by-gene approaches like whole- or core-genome multilocus sequence typing (wg/cgMLST) offer promise but face challenges.
CENTAUR aims to overcome these hurdles by developing tools for creating and rapidly adopting genotyping schemas applicable to a hypothetical bacterial pathogen X, potentially aiding in prevention and therapeutic strategy design. Diverse bacterial models will guide CENTAUR’s development, with its outputs facilitating ISIDORe’s rapid detection and tracking of bacterial pathogens.
The ISIDORe consortium is conducting Joint Research Activities (JRA) to develop new services for studying SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and ISIDORe Priority Preparedness Pathogens. This effort aims to offer a cutting-edge catalogue of services addressing both immediate and future needs. The JRA is supporting ISIDORe access providers to develop essential tools, methods, and models for researching these critical pathogens.
- Find out more about ISIDORe here.
- For further information about CENTAUR contact Patricia Carvajal at patriciacarvajal@eatris.eu
