Building Europe’s frontline against future pandemics

From routine infections to emerging health threats, being prepared matters. Dr Lennie Derde, newly appointed CEO of the Ecraid medical research network, explains how European collaboration and EU support are strengthening clinical research readiness.

By Horizon Magazine Staff

Being prepared for emerging infectious diseases is not only about responding to emergencies. It also means having the right research systems in place every day, so that new knowledge can be generated quickly and shared across borders when needed.

This is the ambition behind the European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases (Ecraid), a pan-European, not-for-profit research network whose goal is to improve how Europe studies and responds to infectious diseases, including antimicrobial resistance and other emerging health threats.

Derde, an intensive care physician and infectious disease researcher with first-hand experience of pandemic-scale research, became Ecraid’s new CEO in January 2026. She previously led the European region of the global REMAP-CAP trial, one of the landmark studies that rapidly identified effective treatments for COVID-19 patients.

In this interview, Derde explains why “everyday preparedness” matters, how EU investment made Ecraid possible, and why multinational collaboration is essential when facing threats that know no borders.

If the past two decades have taught us anything, it is that we needed to change how research is conducted during pandemics. From the 2009 swine flu (H1N1) pandemic to COVID-19, we have seen how quickly infectious diseases can spread – and how unprepared research systems can be.

During the swine flu pandemic, hardly any patients were recruited into clinical trials, and none of those trials delivered results while the pandemic was still ongoing. By contrast, during COVID-19, new trial designs allowed us to generate evidence much faster. But even then, we saw that research could only move quickly where systems were already in place.

That is why a permanent, Europe-wide clinical research network is so important. In a pandemic, you cannot start building a network from scratch. You need hospitals that are already engaged, trained and resourced, and that can start research immediately. Ecraid has spent years building exactly that kind of infrastructure.

We often describe this as a “warm-base” research network. In simple terms, that means research sites are not sitting idle until a crisis hits. They are continuously involved in studies, collecting data, running trials and maintaining expertise, so that when an emergency arises, everything is already up and running.

Ecraid is committed to reducing the harm caused by infectious diseases, both for individuals and for society as a whole. In Europe today, two challenges stand out in particular: new infectious diseases that can spread quickly and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance.

New diseases, including those with the potential to cause a pandemic, are appearing more often as our climate changes, global travel increases and humans and animals live ever closer together.

At the same time, many bacteria are becoming resistant to existing antibiotics – a problem often called the “silent pandemic” because it develops gradually, but affects anyone who needs treatment for an infection.

With its Europe-wide network of researchers, hospitals and partners, Ecraid has the scientific expertise and the operational capacity needed to tackle these threats in a coordinated way. Importantly, we do this in close collaboration with partners across Europe and beyond, because these problems are global by nature.

European funding played a crucial role in turning Ecraid from an idea into a functioning Europe-wide research network. The EU has been remarkably forward-looking in this respect.

The idea for Ecraid emerged during two earlier EU-funded initiatives: COMBACTE (jointly funded by industry), which focused on antimicrobial resistance, and PREPARE, which addressed emerging infectious diseases. Both projects were designed with sustainability in mind, aiming to build something that would last beyond their funding periods.

That vision was carried forward through ECRAID-Plan, a Horizon 2020 project that laid the foundations for establishing Ecraid as a permanent organisation. Then, in 2021, the EU invested €30 million in ECRAID-Base, which allowed us to build our warm-base network, launch large observational studies and continue our platform trials.

Thanks to this support, Ecraid has become a self-sustaining, not-for-profit organisation, funded through a mix of public and industry partnerships. This kind of long-term investment is rare, and it shows how EU funding can create lasting value for public health.

Adaptive platform trials are designed to make clinical research faster and more flexible. Instead of testing just one treatment at a time, they allow several possible therapies to be studied within a single trial, so each participant helps answer more than one research question.

Crucially, new treatments can be added as the trial goes on – a bit like adding a new carriage to a train that is already moving. This means promising options can be tested straight away, rather than waiting months or years for a new study to start.

These trials also use modern statistical approaches that offer greater flexibility in situations with many uncertainties, like a pandemic. Together, this allows us to generate reliable results much faster than traditional methods.

The success of REMAP-CAP showed just how powerful international collaboration can be. During the pandemic, researchers around the world shared data, ideas and workloads, allowing results to be generated much faster than would have been possible by working in isolation.

That experience underlines why it is so important that Ecraid stay closely connected with research networks and experts beyond Europe. Infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance do not stop at national borders, and effective research depends on cooperation across countries.

Working together is the only way to produce strong, reliable evidence that can quickly improve patient care.

Being research-ready means combining innovative, leading-edge science with the practical ability to act quickly. It’s not enough to have good ideas – you also need systems that are ready to work in real hospitals, with real patients.

At Ecraid, our network is very data-driven. This allows us to understand what each hospital and research site does best. We track how diseases are affecting people through ongoing prospective observational studies, and we combine that with large clinical trials that can quickly shift focus if a new health threat emerges.

We also make sure data can move easily between different parts of the health system – from GP clinics and emergency departments to hospital wards and intensive care units. By designing studies so data can be shared and reused from the start, we can work faster with partners and turn research into better care for patients more quickly.

The world of health research is evolving, shaped not only by science, but also by wider political and global changes. Ecraid is designed to be flexible, so that it can adapt to those changes.

Through its role in major European initiatives such as the European Partnership for Pandemic Preparedness and its BE READY NOW initiative, the organisation is helping to build a true interconnected “network of networks” that keeps research capacity active and ready across Europe.

At the same time, familiar challenges have not gone away. Drug-resistant infections, diseases that spread from animals to humans, and other infectious threats continue to affect people’s health.

Ecraid aims to tackle these ongoing risks by working across borders and disciplines, using innovative research approaches to support better prevention, treatment and preparedness for the future.

This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.