The ISIDORe project – “Integrated Services for Infectious Disease Outbreak Research” will increase the European capacity to provide research services dedicated to the study of infectious diseases, with emphasis on COVID-19. ISIDORe is one of the strategic projects funded by the European Commission to implement its bio-defence preparedness plan against COVID-19 variants, called “HERA Incubator”.
The ISIDORe project brings together more than 150 scientific institutions from 31 countries that are committed to providing part of their scientific and technological capacity so that scientists can access the equipment and resources necessary to advance research on the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other infectious agents with public health impact. This way, the ISIDORe consortium, made of the capacities of European ESFRI infrastructures and coordinated networks, aims 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.
ISIDORe is ambitious but achievable in a timely fashion due to the relevance and previous experience of the consortia partners and their complementary fields of expertise, which address 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.
With 21 million euros of funding from the European Commission, the project will be led by the European Research Infrastructure on Highly pathogenic Agents (ERINHA) and will have CCMAR-Algarve as one of its 154 partners.
