BBMRI-ERIC receives two new grants for coronavirus initiatives 

October 21, 2020

In summer 2021, BBMRI-ERIC was named a beneficiary of two newly awarded grants from the EU Commission addressing COVID-19 and its variants.  

The 12 million EUR project “BY-COVID – Beyond COVID”, under the “FAIR and open data sharing in support to European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases” topic, is coordinated by ELIXIR. It “aims to provide comprehensive open data on SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases across scientific, medical, public health and policy domains.”  

BBMRI-ERIC will be participating alongside affiliated entities Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine (IMTM), Czech Republic; University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), the Netherlands; Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia, Italy (CRS4); University of Notthingham, UK; University of Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB), Italy; and Istituto Nationale malattei infettive L.Spallanzani (INMI), Italy. BBMRI-ERIC will co-lead Work Package 4 on connecting the COVID-19 platform to analysis tools and local portal. 

In the 21 million EUR project “ISIDORe – Integrated Services for Infectious Disease Outbreak Research”, under the “Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics” topic, and coordinated by fellow research infrastructure ERINHA, BBMRI-ERIC will be contributing to Work Package 4 on Quality for data, ELSI, training and customer satisfaction measures as well as Work Package 8 on Provision of access to clinical samples. BBMRI’s affiliated entities in WP4 are Leipzig Medical Biobank (LMB), Institut für Klinische Chemie und Laboratoriums-diagnostik Jena (IBBJ) and UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre, UCL. In addition, 40 BBMRI-ERIC member biobanks will be acting as service providers for WP8.  

The European Research Infrastructure for biobanking and biomolecular resources, BBMRI-ERIC offers services in quality management, IT and ethical, legal and societal issues (ELSI) in service of biomedical research, including on COVID-19.