EUCAST panels of phenotypically defined strains.

During 2020, EUCAST in collaboration with CCUG (the Culture Collection of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden), and EUCAST NACs, will make panels of organisms with phenotypically well characterized levels of susceptibility available. MIC-values were determined with reference broth micro-dilution on several occasions before and after freeze drying. Each panel will contain 5 - 25 strains of which a few strains have MICs representative of the wild type of the species, and others with typical resistance mechanisms and phenotypically reproducible levels of susceptibility. Each panel will highlight a difficult area of susceptibility testing. They will be useful for 

• laboratories aiming to validate the accuracy of their AST methods
• validating the quality of commercial material intended for susceptibility testing (the MIC-value or the correct categorisation of S, I and R) 
• developers of antimicrobials and AST methods.

• Streptococcus pneumoniae - selection of strains based on varying levels of betalactam susceptibility (2020).
• Pseudomonas aeruginosa - selection of strains with varying susceptibility to many agents, and genetic characterization (2022).