Michel Delmée and his group have mainly concentrated their research activity on the study of the epidemiology of Clostridium difficile infections. The development and the evaluation of new diagnostic approaches on one hand and the application of new typing techniques in national and international surveillance programs on the other hand, have been the two main research axes for the last thirty years.
The serogrouping of C. difficile was, in 1985, one of the first typing technique which was published and was applied to multiple epidemiological studies in Belgium and in the world. Since the beginnig of this century, molecular approaches like ribotyping or MLVA have superceded serogrouping and whole genome sequencing is currently under development.
Since 2011 the laboratory has become National Reference Center for C. difficile. In collaboration with the National Institute of Health he pursues a national surveillance program in all belgian acute hospitals and is also involved in several european epidemiological surveyx conducted by the ECDC.
The research group Yersinia pursues the work of Professor Georges Wauters who was a pioneer in the study of these pathogens. For the last 40 years the laboratory has collaborated with the KULeuven to conduct a national surveillance program and they are recognized as NRCsince 2012. Research is mainly oriented to the development of new approaches for molecular typing and characterization of virulence determinants.