Completed Projects

CLINIMARK

cliniMARK: Good biomarker practice to increase the number of clinically validated biomarkers

Topic: H2020 OC-2016-1-20724
Type of Action: COST
Duration: 48 months
Start date: 14th March 2017
Grant agreement: CA16113
Web: CLINIMARK
Total request Grant by Consortium: –
Total request Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: –
Assigned 3rd parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Experts contributing to the establishment of best biomarker practices, networking
Status: approval date 24th October 2016
Chair: Theo M. Luider
Vice Chair: Antonia Vlahou

Thousands of circulating proteins have been shown to be hallmarks of emerging disease, response to treatment, or a patients’ prognosis. The identification of these small molecule biomarkers holds a great promise for significant improvement of personalized medicine based on simple blood tests. For instance, diagnosis and prognosis with biomarkers (e.g. carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)) has significantly improved patient survival and decreased healthcare costs in colorectal cancer patients. Unfortunately, despite significant investments to increase the number of biomarker studies, only 150 out of thousands of identified biomarkers have currently been implemented in clinical practice. This is mainly caused by the timeconsuming process of reliably detecting biomarkers, the irreproducibility of studies that determine a biomarkers’ clinical value, and by a mismatch in studies that are performed by academia and what is required for regulatory and market approval. To increase the number of clinically validated biomarkers, rather than further increasing the number of biomarker discovery studies, CliniMARK will improve the quality and reproducibility of studies and establish a coherent biomarker development pipeline from discovery to market introduction.

CORBEL

Coordinated Research Infrastructures Building Enduring Life-science services

Topic: H2020 INFRADEV-4
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 48 months
Start Date: 1 September 2015
Grant Agreement Nr: 654248
Web: CORBEL
Coordinator: Niklas Blomberg
Co-Coordinator: Erik Steinfelder
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €14,000,000.00
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €1,799,468.00
(includes funds for Headquarters, Common Service ELSI and linked third parties)
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement:
BBMRI.nl/LUMC, BBMRI.fi/THL, BBMRI.no/NIPH,NTNU, BBMRI.ee/UTARTU, BBMRI.at/MUG
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Co-Coordinated by BBMRI-ERIC, Work Package 3: case studies (National Nodes); Work Package 7: Common Service ELSI; Work Package 9: Training

Lead by EMBL/ELEXIR: CORBEL will establish a collaborative framework of shared services between the ESFRI Biological and Medical Research Infrastructures that transform the European research community from discovery of basic biological mechanisms to applied medical translation – through the provision of a unified interface, aligned services and coordinated user access to a range of advanced technology platforms.

CY-Biobank

Biobanking and the Cyprus Human Genome Project

Topic: H2020-WIDESPREAD-2014-1
Type of Action: FPA-SGA
Duration: 12 months
Start Date: 1 September 2015
Grant Agreement Nr: 664561
Web: CY-Biobank
Coordinator: Constantinos Deltas
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €460,637.50
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €64,475.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement:
none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Work Package 5: Standards, ELSI Compliance and Data Management; Task 5.1: Standards/Procedures Adoption & Quality Processes; Task 5.2: ELSI Compliance; Task 5.3: Data Management Plan (raw data availability and Gold access policy); Task 5.1/Deliverable 5.1, Task 5.2/Deliverable 5.2, Task 5.3/Deliverable 5.3

Lead by University of Cyprus: The upgrading of MMRC into a CoE and its close partnership with the named Advanced Partners is a safe and sound strategy that will assist Cyprus over the next decade to enter large European networks and participate at ongoing and future epidemiological studies with mutual benefit to the Cypriot and the European patients.

EGI-Engage

Engaging the EGI Community towards an Open Science Commons

Topic: H2020 EGI-EINFRA-1-6
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 30 months
Start Date: 1 May 2015
Grant Agreement Nr: 654142
Web: EGI-Engage
Coordinator: Tiziana Ferrari
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €8,000,000.00
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €128,550.00 (includes funds for linked third parties)
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement:
BBMRI.cz/Masaryc University, BBMRI.se/KI, BBMRI.nl/LUMC
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Work Package 1: Technology exchange, outreach, training and support with the following deliverables; Task 1.1: Support and outreach to the user community Task 1.3: Coordination.

Lead by Stichting European Grid Initiative: High-throughput technologies are more accessible to research-biobanking and the number of biobanks providing services that require large storage capability and parallel data analysis is increasing dramatically. Moreover, data from multiple biobanks must now be pooled to reach statistical power to elucidate meaningful associations, while complying with legal and regulatory issues. This BBMRI-ERIC EGI (European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network) Competence Centre thus focuses on helping BBMRI-ERIC to bridge this gap with the implementation of big data storage in combination with data analysis and data federation using EGI federated cloud infrastructure.

EMTRAIN

European Medicines Research
TRAIning Network

Topic: FP7/2007-2013
Type of Action: IMI
Duration: 84 months
Start Date: 1 October 2009
BBMRI-ERIC full partner: as of 1 October 2015
Grant Agreement Nr: 115015
Web: EMTRAIN
Coordinator: Mike Hardman
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €4,000,000.00
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €9,754.45
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Education & training platform, IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative)

Lead by Astra Zeneca

EMTRAIN will establish a pan-European platform for education and training covering the whole lifecycle of medicines from basic research through clinical development to pharmaco-vigilance. The public consortium consists of the six pan-European biomedical research infrastructures from the ESFRI roadmap, that cover a broad spectrum of competencies from molecules to humans, with a pan-European dimension. The EFPIA consortium has considerable experience in training and education, management, pan-European geographical outreach, and an extensive external network of contacts. The participants, together with the coordinators of IMI&T topics will participate in the Strategic Co-ordination Board to ensure coordination between the IMI&T topics whereas the Steering Committee will supervise the management of the project. E&T (Education and Training) topics representatives will be invited to participate in work packages activities. Based on extensive mapping of existing resources and on a gap and overlap analysis (Work Package 3) the consortium will develop and implement a strategy for harmonisation and accreditation (Work Package 4) of Master level Work Package 5) and PhD programmes (Work Package 6) as well as continuous education programmes (Work Package 7). It will develop innovative concepts and methods in conjunction with the other topics (Work Package 8) that will support the content for the IMI education programmes. National implementation will be facilitated through contacts with university authorities, ministries of higher education, and through national liaison offices. After implementation in a core group of institutions, extension is planned both within countries represented and in additional countries (Work Package 4), with the support of a dissemination and communication activity (Work Package 9) The harmonisation and the modular nature of these programmes will allow trans-disciplinary curricula as well as trans-border mobility, and PhD programmes will be designed to foster industry/academia mobility and collaboration.

EOSC-HUB

EOSC-hub: Integrating and managing services for the European Open Science Cloud

Topic: H2020-EINFRA-12-2017
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 36 months
Start date: 1st January 2018
Grant agreement: 777536
Web: EOSC-Hub
Total request Grant by Consortium: € 33,376,631.75
Total request Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: € 25,625.-
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Development of policies for sensitive human data to be hosted or processed in the European Open Science Cloud.

EOSC-hub builds on existing technology already at TRL 8 and addresses the need for interoperability by promoting the adoption of open standards and protocols. By mobilising e-Infrastructures comprising more than 300 data centres worldwide and 18 pan-European infrastructures, this project is a ground-breaking milestone for the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud. The result will be an integrated catalogue of services, software and data from the EGI Federation, EUDAT CDI, INDIGO-DataCloud and major research e-Infrastructures.

BBMRI-LPC

Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure – Large Prospective Cohorts

Topic: INFRA-2012-1.1.9
Type of Action: CP&CSA
Duration: 57 months
Start Date: 1 February 2013 – 31 October 2017
BBMRI-ERIC full partner: as of 1 April 2014
Web: BBMRI-LPC
Coordinator: Markus Perola
Co-Coordinator: Gertjan van Ommen
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €8,000,000.00
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €14,552.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: BBMRI-LPC Forum, BBMRI-ERIC

Abstract:

Lead by UH-FIMM.
BBMRI-LPC unites the large study sets of the European Biobanking and Biomolecular resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), thus achieving a worldwide unique scale of integration.

Specifically, we aim to:
1. Evaluate/improve the harmonisation of individual data on health, lifestyle and other exposures;

2. Develop/implement harmonised definitions of diseases;

3. Improve biobanking and research technologies and develop innovative solutions facilitating high-quality, fair transnational access to samples and data;

4. Provide free transnational access by users, through study proposals selected by an open, pan-European call;

5. In the framework of these studies, generate and provide access to whole genome sequences, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and methylome data;

6. Build new public-private partnerships involving large-scale prospective cohorts, and strengthening existing ones, allowing transparent industrial access to academic expertise;

7. Build a network transferring the expertise of established European large-scale biobanks to new biobank initiatives under development in other countries (BBMRI-LPC Forum).

B3AFRICA

Bridging Biobanking and Biomedical Research across Europe and Africa

Topic: INFRASUPP-6-2014
Type of Action: CSA
Duration: 36 months
Start Date: 1 July 2015
Grant Agreement Nr: 654404
Web: B3AFRICA
Coordinator: Erik Bongcam-Rudloff
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €201,250.00
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €70,000.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: contacts to Africa, ELSI activities will be informative for the work of the Common Service ELSI

Lead by Sverige Lantbruksuniversitet

B3Africa (Bridging Biobanking and Biomedical Research across Europe and Africa) will dramatically improve and facilitate the development of better predictive, preventive and personalised healthcare worldwide. The rapidly evolving African biobanks are an invaluable resource: The African population has the greatest genomic diversity on the planet and represents an incredible resource of information to advance biomedical research. B3Africa aims to implement a cooperation platform and technical informatics framework for biobank integration between Africa and Europe. The collaboration harmonises the ethical and legal framework, biobank data representation and bioinformatiCommon Service pipelines for sharing data and knowledge among biobanks and allowing access for researchers from both continents.

Main actors from the relevant initiatives including Human Heredity and Health in Africa project (H3Africa), European Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources research infrastructure (BBMRI-ERIC) and LMIC Biobank and Cohort Network (BCNet) collaborate in B3Africa to address the following objectives:

Defining an ethical and regulatory framework for biobank data sharing between Europe and Africa.
Defining data models for representing biobank and research data based on existing best practices, standards and ontologies.
Designing an informatics platform using existing open-source software (with eBioKit and BiBBox as essential modules) integrating workflows for biobank applications.
Implementation of an education and training system for information and capacity building.
Validating the B3Africa concept with existing biobanks from both continents.

B3Africa will provide the critical mass to maximise efficiency in biomedical research, supports defragmentation through integration and allows efficient leverage of existing biobanks and e-infrastructures in Europe and Africa. The technical informatics framework will be designed for easy upscaling and integration with other research infrastructures.

CETOCOEN EXCELLENCE

CETOCOEN Excellence TEAMING Phase I

Topic: H2020-WIDESPREAD-2016-2017
Type of Action: CSA
Duration: 12 months
Start date: 1st September 2017
Grant agreement: 763677
Web: CETOCOEN Excellence
Total request Grant by Consortium: € 384,867.50
Total request Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: € 43,005.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none

Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Developing methods for integrating biobanks with exposome data.

The aim of this project was to exploit research capacities built in Central Europe with support from the European Structural and Investment Funds and develop a cutting-edge research platform capable of addressing major scientific and societal challenges of contemporary Europe in the area of Environment and Health. It enhanced a scientific value of existing regional population studies and turned them into the accessible source of valuable information by developing sustainable biobanking platform and harmonizing their protocols, questionnaires, and standard operating procedures to allow for their joint assessment and interpretation of results. Existing research programmes were expanded to address questions related to a wider range of factors (generically called exposome) impacting human health and wellbeing. To identify new biomarkers of exposures, effects, and susceptibility to pathologies, innovative approaches to the assessment of multiple exposures were developed including omics technologies, novel methods for integrative analysis, software tools and computational models, chemical sensors and triggers allowing for tracing such processes in biological systems. This innovative research is well aligned with the European and national strategic priorities and documents (including the National Innovation Strategy), and will generate substantial new knowledge needed for prioritization of future research and policy actions in the area of chemical management as well as practical tools applicable in health protection, prevention, diagnostics, and intervention with the aim of minimising the burden of disease, improve the health and well-being of citizens and lower health costs.

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PhenoMeNal

A comprehensive and standardized e-infrastructure
for analyzing medical metabolic phenotype data

Topic: H2020 -EINFRA-1-2014
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 36 months
Start Date: 1 September 2015 Grant
Agreement Nr: 654241
Web: http://phenomenal-h2020.eu/home/
Coordinator: Christoph Steinbeck
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €8,810,922.00
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: € 145,076.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: proposal trying to organize the metabolomics community at the European level, and we are keen to do it in full synergy with BBMRI.

Lead by European Molecular Biology Laboratory

During the next 10 years, a significant number of the 742,000,000 European citizens will have their genome determined routinely. This will be complemented with much cheaper measurement of the metabolome of biofluids which will link the genotype with data on the exposome of patients, which for the first time enables the development of a truly personalised and hand tailored medicine based on hard scientific measurement.

EOSCpilot

The European Open Science Cloud for Research Pilot Project

Topic: INFRADEV-04-2016
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 24
Start date: 1st January 2017
Grant agreement: 739563
Web: EOSCpilot
Total request Grant by Consortium: €9,953,067.50
Total request Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €78,405.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Development and piloting of policies of medical data sharing as a part of European Open Science Cloud.

Lead by Science and Technology Facilities Council: The EOSCpilot pro- ject will support the first phase in the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as described in the EC Communication on European Cloud Initiatives [2016].

It will establish the governance framework for the EOSC and contribute to the devel- opment of European open science policy and best practice;
It will develop a number of pilots that integrate services and infrastructures to demon- strate interoperability in a number of scientific domains; and
It will engage with a broad range of stakeholders, crossing borders and communities, to build the trust and skills required for adoption of an open approach to scientific research.

These actions will build on and leverage already available resources and capabilities from research infrastructure and einfrastructure organisations to maximise their use across the research community. The EOSCpilot project will address some of the key reasons why European research is not yet fully tapping into the potential of data. In particular, it will:

reduce fragmentation between data infrastructures by working across scientific and economic domains, countries and governance models, and
improve interoperability between data infrastructures by demonstrating how data and resources can be shared even when they are large and complex and in varied formats.

In this way, the EOSC pilot project will improve the ability to reuse data resources and pro- vide an important step towards building a dependable open-data research environment where data from publicly funded research is always open and there are clear incentives and rewards for the sharing of data and resources.

Research Infrastructures Training Programme

Topic: H2020 INFRASUPP-3
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 48 months
Start Date: 1 September 2015
Grant Agreement Nr: 654156
Web: RItrain
Coordinator: Markus Pasterk
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €1,995,634
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €514,423.20
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Coordinated by BBMRI-ERIC. Definition of required competences in distributed RIs throughout the lifecycle of an RI, from the initiation Preparatory Phase through to operational maturity.

Rabbit 2

Topic: FPA2016/EIT/EIT Health
Type of Action: FPA (external partner)
Duration: 12 months
Start Date: 1 January 2020
Grant Agreement Nr: 19456
Web: Biobanks Project | EIT Health
Coordinator: EIT Health
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €15,000.00
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: FPA2016/EIT/EIT Health
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: As an external project partner, BBMRI-ERIC’s role was to provide information about EU countries – how the landscape of biobanks and sample collections looked like in each country and what the local regulations for access were.

SPIDIA4P

Topic: SC1-HCO-02-2016
Type of Action: CSA
Duration: 48 months
Start Date: 1 January 2017
Grant Agreement Nr: 733112
Web: www.spidia.eu
Coordinator: Uwe Oelmüller
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €1,999,972.50
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €100,673.75 (Headquarters Quality Service)
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Standards for biobanks and reference centres, education and training programmes, industry-academia stakeholder workshop

EDIReX

Topic: H2020-INFRAIA-2016-2017
Type of Action: RIA
Duration: 54 months
Start Date: 1 February 2018
Grant Agreement Nr: 731105
Web: CORDIS Project Fact Sheet
Coordinator: Universita Degli Studi di Torino
Total requested Grant by Consortium: €5,156,198.75
Total requested Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €70,558.75
Linked Third Parties/BBMRI-ERIC Framework Agreement: none
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: Development of Levels of Assurance for authentication suitable for biomedical research applications.

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RD-Connect

An integrated platform connecting registries, biobanks and clinical bioinformatic for rare disease research

AARC2

Authentication and Authorisation For Research and Collaboration

BioMedBridges

Building data bridges and services between biological and medical infrastructures in Europe