Antibiotic resistance research -
MERINO Clinical Research Network

Clinical research/trials

TREAT-GNB Platform Trial

Regional sponsor: UQ
Global sponsor: NUS

An innovative trial utilising an adaptive platform design to evaluate treatment strategies for severe infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria NCT07004049.

MERLIN-BSI Trial

Sponsor: UQ

A stepped-wedge cluster RCT utilising a novel metagenomic diagnostic platform to better detect and treat sepsis in adult and paediatric Intensive Care Units across the Greater Brisbane Region; In-Development. 

DECCA Study

Sponsor: UQ

A prospective observational diagnostic accuracy study evaluating the acceleration of pathogen detection and antibiotic resistance prediction in children with cancer and suspected sepsis.

BALANCE+ Platform Trial

Sponsor: Monash

A perpetual multiple domain randomized controlled platform trial to evaluate various treatment strategies for Gram-negative bloodstream infections NCT06537609.

BLING III (Post-hoc Analysis) Study

A post-hoc review of the published data from the BLING III Trial NCT03213990 using generalised pairwise comparisons and mortality risk over time.

Comparing efficiencies of platform trials with standard two-arm trials

A simulation study in Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia with Acinetobacter infections

Predicting the narrowest spectrum empiric antibiotic regimens for the treatment of bloodstream infections in ICU patients

We will apply machine learning to data in the MIMIC-IV database to predict the probability of antibiotic susceptibility results to recommended empiric antimicrobial therapies for BSI of ICU patients. 

Medical microbiology studies

Within our molecular microbiology laboratory, we have in-house expertise in the molecular applications of nucleic acid extraction, PCR, and short (Illumina) and long read (nanopore) sequencing.

Additionally, we undertake bacterial and yeast identification, Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (Broth microdilution, Etest and disc testing) as well as specialised microbial testing suited to any clinical or research project.

Our laboratory processes are in accordance with NATA Standards and include:

• BMD undertaken according to AS ISO 20776.1-2017, EUCAST and CLSI
• All testing ISO 17025 Competence of Testing and Calibration Labs
• Equipment: Equipment assurance, in house calibration and equipment verification (PDF, 167.3 KB)
• Culture Collection Curation: Maintenance of Microbiological Reference Culture Collections (MRCCs) v. August 2021
• Inhouse media QC: Guidelines for the Quality Assurance of Medical Microbiological culture media (2nd edition) July 2012
• Experiments with verification or validation according to: NATA Tech Note 17 Validation of Quantitative Methods Oct 2013

Projects

Game Changer Lab Sub-Studies

• Defining cefiderocol resistance determinants and response to therapy 
• Novel methods for cefiderocol resistance prediction, including machine-learning from genomic data

Novel antibiotics against MDR_GNBs

We use our extensive and well-characterised culture collection to test novel antibiotics and diagnostics, including industry collaboration (e.g. TAMRISA).

META Study

Improved pathogen and antimicrobial resistance diagnostics in bloodstream infection and sepsis using a metagenomic approach.

TURHABSI Study

A prospective cohort study investigating clinical, microbiological and molecular epidemiology of hospital-acquired bloodstream infections in Türkiye. Twenty-two centres from seven regions of Türkiye participated in this cohort study.

Melioidosis diagnostics

The study aims to use mNGS technologies to develop, evaluate and compare proposed diagnostic workflows for detecting Burkholderia pseudomallei in spiked whole blood samples.

Culture amplification and rapid Nanopore in BSI

This study aims to determine how early pathogen identification and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) prediction can be achieved using Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) direct from blood cultures with short incubation.