The use of antimicrobial therapies is fundamental for the progress of medical treatments over the past 70 years. Antimicrobial therapy not only serves to treat acute infections; it is also indispensable for various other kinds of medical treatment, e.g. for prophylaxis in surgery or oncology. Thus the development of antimicrobial resistance is a serious problem for modern medicine. The EMPIR project AntiMicroResist coordinated by LGC uses different approaches to tackle this challenge, such as novel measurement methods for development of antibiotics, metrology for sequencing of resistant microbes, and characterization of reference materials for external quality assurance. The workpackage led by PTB establishes reference measurement procedures for measuring virus concentrations in reference materials. Measurement procedures include digital PCR but also direct counting in flow. The exact virus concentration in reference materials needs to be known for example to determine the limit of detection. Resistance against antiviral drugs frequently develops in the course of the treatment of chronic viral infections (e.g. by cytomegalovirus, HIV). In this case of secondary antimicrobial resistance the absolute virus concentration is a crucial parameter.

Milavec M, Pavšič J, Bogožalec Košir A, Jones GM, O’Sullivan DM, Devonshire AS, Van Heuverswyn F, Karczmarczyk M, Neeb J, Plauth A, Corbisier P, Schimmel H, Kummrow A, Neukammer J, Foy CA, Kammel M, Grunert HP, Zeichhardt H, Huggett JF.
The performance of human cytomegalovirus digital PCR reference measurement procedure in seven external quality assessment schemes over four years
Methods 201 (2022) 65-73

Falak S, Macdonald R, Busby EJ, O’Sullivan DM, Milavec M, Plauth A, Kammel M, Zeichhardt H, Grunert HP, Kummrow A, Huggett JF.An assessment of the reproducibility of reverse transcription digital PCR quantification of HIV-1
Methods 201 (2022) 34-40