ABRomics stakeholders meeting: “2025 is the year to promote the potential of the platform”

The annual meeting of ABRomics stakeholders was held on January 30, 2025 at the Institut Pasteur, Paris. The ABRomics’ Steering Committee and the team members presented the progress of the project and its ongoing and future developments.

The ABRomics Users and Stakeholders committee is made up of representatives of Ministries (Research, Agriculture and Health), Santé Publique France, ANSES, Vaincre la Mucoviscidose, the Promise network, and the PPR antibioresistance. Chaired by the co-PIs of ABRomics, Claudine Medigue and Phillipe Glaser, the objectives of this third meeting were to present the functionalities of the ABRomics platform recently open to the public, the ongoing and future developments, and to discuss the sustainability of ABRomics following the extension of its funding until 2028 by the PPR antibioresistance.

Amanda Dieuaide and Raphaël Tackx, two of the 5 engineers (CDD) in the development team, gave a demo of the latest of the ABRomics platform (v1.1). Following a brief presentation of the main components of the ABRomics PF (web interfaces, relational database, Galaxy workflows), they demonstrated its functionalities: how to create a new user account, a project, upload data,launch analysis, and explore results. Amanda and Raphaël also presented the future developments planned for the platform over the course of 2025, notably FastQ data compatibility or the inclusion of the cgMLST functionality.

Part of the meeting was also dedicated to important developments realized in parallel in the context of other ABRomics work packages : Samuel Chaffron showcased the last updates on the data integration and modelisation tool (WP3) and progress on the various use-cases (WP4) were summarized by the corresponding leaders (David Vallenet, Phillipe Glaser, Xavier Charpentier, Geneviève Hery-Arnaud, Benoit Doublet, Jean Armengaud). Bérénice Batut and Nam Phan Van Song also intervened on the training (WP5) and communication (WP6) aspects of the project. Finally, Claudine Médigue presented the status of project expenditure up to november 2026 (26% of funds to be committed), and then the terms and conditions for an extension to 2028 with additional funding were discussed with Evelyne Jouvin Marche (director of the PPR antibiorésistance).

The meeting concluded by a feedback of the stakeholders representatives. Professor Antoine Andremont (Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche) spoke on behalf of the committee. He praised “the quality of the work and the originality of the project on its cross-disciplinary and One Health aspects“. He also mentioned the “necessity to open the platform to a wide range  of users“, “to promote the full potential of the platform to a large audience“, and hence “to foster its interoperability with prospective partners“. The ABRomics team was also encouraged to access EU and ANR fundings (such as the recent PEPR PREZODE initiative). Following those positive assessments, 2025 promises to be a pivotal year for ABRomics!