Topic: HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EMERGENCY-02 Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics
Duration: 36 months
Start date: 1 February 2022
Grant agreement: 101046133
Web: TBA
Total request Grant by Consortium: €20,998,624
Total request Grant by BBMRI-ERIC: €602,208
Benefit/tasks for BBMRI-ERIC: 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 ISIDORe consortium, made of the capacities of European ESFRI infrastructures and coordinated networks, proposes to assemble the largest and most diverse research and service providing instrument to study infectious diseases in Europe, from structural biology to clinical trials. Giving scientists access to the whole extent of our state of the art facilities, cutting edge services, advanced equipment and expertise, in an integrated way and with a common goal, will enable or accelerate the generation of new knowledge and intervention tools to ultimately help control SARS-CoV-2 in particular, and epidemic prone pathogens in general, while avoiding fragmentation and duplication among European initiatives.
Such a global and interdisciplinary approach is meant to allow the implementation of user projects that are larger, more ambitious and more impactful than the EU supported transnational activities that the consortium is used to run. Our proposition is ambitious but achievable in a timely fashion due to the relevance and previous experience of the partners that we have gathered and that have complementary fields of expertise, which addresses the need for an interdisciplinary effort. Leveraging all these existing strengths to develop synergies will create an additional value and enhance Europe capacity for controlling emerging or re emerging and epidemic infectious diseases, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic. Such a global and coordinated approach is consistent with the recommendations of the One Health concept and necessary to make significant contributions to solving complex societal problems like epidemics and pandemics.