EH 4_2015

EUROPEAN HOSPITAL  Vol 24 Issue 4/15 26 LABORATORY & INFECTION The European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Diagnostics and life sciences firm gains ID/AST gold standard The world’s largest microbiology event Giant aims to inflate microbiology The European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), the largest conference of its kind, drew 10,697 specialists and companies from around 110 countries to Copenhagen for its 25th annual event. Over 200 sessions were delivered, including an in-the-pipeline gathering, keynote lectures, symposia, oral sessions, educational workshops, meeting with experts, and around 2,500 poster presentations – plus some 3,000 abstracts presented by international experts. At Europe’s largest meeting for clinical laboratories, Beckman Coulter stepped forward to welcome a new class of customers looking for familiar and reliable instruments, John Brosky reports. Inevitably, antimicrobial resist- ance continues to lead the agen- da of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), with a gen- eral consensus among delegates that big pharma will provide answers to antimicrobial resistance, but the keys to finding the solution will be found by universities and small medium enterprises (SMEs). A new addition to the congress is In January this year, Beckman Coulter acquired the entire microbi- ology business of Siemens, including the world-leading line of MicroScan analysers for microbial identifica- tion and antibiotic sensitivity testing (ID/AST). With an installed base of over 6,000 instruments worldwide the company enters this segment of clinical laboratories for the first time, yet already as the undisputed global leader. At EuroMedLab in Paris, at the front and centre on the Beckman Coulter stand was the fourth gen- eration MicroScan WalkAway plus system freshly dressed with the company’s logo, and backed by the same experts, including Senior Marketing Manager for the business unit in Europe, Philippe Arowas. ‘The MicroScan system is the key test for identifying and control- ling, and potentially reducing the prescription of antibiotics, he told European Hospital. The quantitative measures of a bacteria’s resistance with the analys- er helps physicians to know which specific antibiotics they might use to treat a patient and, perhaps more importantly, which ones they should not use. There are some 300 types of bacteria, with new ones appearing suddenly. He cites the example of the New Delhi Metallo (NDM) that showed up in 2008 and spread so quickly that a year later it was found in India, Pakistan, the UK, USA, Canada and Japan. NDM proved to be highly resistant to a broad range of antibiotics, including an entire family of drugs designed specifi- cally for the treatment of antibiotic- resistant bacterial infections. Capturing the results of MicroScan analysis with Beckman Coulter’s LabPro Information Manager and LabPro Connect helps clinical labs share data for epidemiology studies to identify trends in pathogen resist- ance and to track the spread of such infections better. ‘Patients can also share resistance to a bacteria as well as the bacterial infection itself,’ Arowas pointed out. The patient samples to be tested might come from any infected part of the body, he said, whether it is an organ, skin, hair, or bone. After creating a culture, the MicroScan panel is inocu- lated by introducing the bacteria to the array of wells, each containing different con- centrations of an antibiotic. The technician can literally walk away from the instrument, returning after an overnight analysis that will show where the bacteria continued to flourish or where a specific con- centration of antibiotic was effective in killing the pathogen. Beckman Coulter takes over what Arowas estimates to be a 40% of the market share in the world for ID/AST. In some countries, such as Japan, the installed base accounts for 70% of the market, in Spain it is 60%, he said. The main competitor in this segment is bioMérieux, while Becton Dickinson holds a less sig- nificant footprint. Testing for infectious disease is a steadily growing area in clinical laboratory, he said, and the former Siemens group now makes up a new core business for Beckman Coulter. ‘The company acquired these products because it intends to invest in the science and develop new products,’ Arowas added. ‘MicroScan is a first step, but we will see more and more product solutions devel- oped for microbiology. Already we have seen how strong this interest is, though we just started in January.’ This combination, he suggested, means that Beckman Coulter is not only well-positioned to maintain its lead position in microbiology, but holds unique capabilities for advancing its portfolio of products. the pipeline corner, which gave SMEs a chance to present what they have in terms of new mechanisms and approaches. An interesting, recurrent theme was the search for a very narrow spectrum of pathogen-specific anti- biotics, working on the premise that it is promising to exploit specific differences in physiology, or viru- lence mechanisms – an approach that might contribute to personal- ised treatments and one drug for one bug. A key theme for ECCMID is the importance of innovation and new discoveries – for example, for the late-breaker session more than 50 abstracts are submitted annually; the society selects only the top five for presentation. 2015’s late-breakers included evi- dence on the efficacy of a new her- pes zoster vaccine, a study on renal failure rates, as well as advances on the treatments of bacterial pneumo- nia urinary tract and intra-abdomi- nal infections. A possible threat from Ebola engendered considerable interna- tional discussions – and also medi- cal heroics. At ECCMID the organi- sation Médecins Sans Frontières was honoured with a special excellence award in recognition of their recent work against this disease in Africa, as well as decades of international efforts to treat people in other areas of disaster. As mentioned, ECCMID is now the world’s largest scientific event in clinical microbiology and infec- tious diseases. Over the last decade, attendance numbers have doubled and are expected to rise again at ECCMID 2016 in Istanbul. MicroScan WalkAway plus

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