European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases

ECRAID-Base (European Clinical Research Alliance for Infectious Diseases) continues the activities of PREPARE, COMBACTE and ECRAID-Plan, which will lead to establishing ECRAID as an independent non-for-profit legal entity in December 2020. ECRAID-Base is the initial set of activities for ECRAID. As a European clinical research network ECRAID-Base will generate rigorous evidence to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment of infections and to better respond to EID threats.. The network has already been successfully used during the COVID-19 pandemic, with valuable lessons learned. At the heart of ECRAID-Base are 6 perpetual studies; 5 observational studies in ICU (WP2), ER (WP3,4&5) and primary care (WP6), addressing infections relevant for AMR (VAP in WP2 & cUTI in WP3) and EID (ARI in WP4 & WP6, and Disease X in WP5). All will mature towards adaptive platform trials, with capability to rapidly respond to public health threats. These 5 studies will enroll around 20,000 patients per year. The sixth perpetual study is the Randomized Embedded Multifactorial Adaptive Platform (REMAP) for patients with severe CAP in ICU, with capability of rapid adaptation to new public health threats as demonstrated. In a response to COVID-19 the platform was (within 2 months) adapted with new COVID-19 treatment domains and enrolment of non-ICU patients, and the number active sites rapidly increased in 213 sites (June 4th) with 1084 patients enrolled (567 with COVID-19). Supportive to the clinical studies are work packages LAB (for laboratory support), DATA (for datamanagement and innovative epidemiological and statistical research), TRAIN (for training) and PREP (for improving responsiveness to new public health threats). ECRAID-Base, therefore, establishes a pan-European clinical research network to increase efficiency for testing and developing new diagnostic, preventive and/or therapeutic strategies and therapies and improving responsiveness to new public health thretbd