BSL3: Access to high containment lab facilities
BLS3, 23.04.2020
The Netherlands

The BSL3 in Rotterdam, was founded to accommodate safe research on infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. The BSL3 research lab facility in Rotterdam was designed to operate according to the highest international biosafety and biosecurity standards, and to facilitate research to multiple teams simultaneously, thus providing unique opportunities for collaborative COVID-19 research using a variety of research modalities including high end instruments for experiments and analyses, in vivo (animals) and in vitro.


IRTA-CReSA: Preclinical research facilities
IRTA-CReSA, 15.04.2020
Spain

IRTA-CReSA is a public research institute devoted to research in animal health following the One Health concept. In the context of COVID-19 crisis, the BSL3 large animal and laboratory facilities can support SARS-CoV-2 isolation, in vitro studies of anti-viral and antibody efficacy, in vivo studies of anti-viral, antibody and vaccine efficacy (once hACE2 transgenic mice become available),  antiviral, antibody and vaccine research, and animal infection model development.


ERINHA: High containment facilities for pre-clinical research
ERINHA, 14.04.2020

The European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents (ERINHA) provides access to its members – leading European high containment facilities (BSL3 and BSL4) -, as well as expertise and project management services to advance research on SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19. The available high containment research capacities include: in vitro research capacity (standard virologic assays, high throughput SARS-CoV-2 screening assays, diagnostic development and testing capacity, virus propagation and quantification), in vivo research capacity (small animal disease models,  Non-Human Primates (NHP) disease models, standard in vivo virologic and immunological assays,  pre-clinical vaccines and therapeutics testing). Additionally ERINHA provides support for coordination of pre-clinical research activities, project management and advise on protocols.

 


EVAg: Development of SARS-Cov-2 diagnostic test
EVAg, 07.04.2020

The European Virus Archive (EVA-Global) is a virtual collection for human, animal and plant viruses, that provides researchers with the necessary material for diagnosing Coronavirus infection. EVAg has developed, and published on January 21st, 2020, the now worldwide used PCR based SARS-Cov-2 diagnostic test. To date, more than 1000 kits of reagents and reference materials have been delivered worldwide, using EVAg budget provisions.


CETAF and DiSSCo: Joint COVID-19 Task Force
DiSSCo, 07.04.2020

The Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) and the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) are forming a covid-19 Task Force. The Task Force will bring together experts with background in topics relevant to the key aspects for the understanding of the zoonotic nature of the SARS-Cov-2 and contribute to the global efforts from the perspective of both key biological properties of the virus and biological informatics. The Task Force objectives are focused on (a) expediting processes across DiSSCo facilities related to the implementation of covid-19 projects, (b) mobilising ad-hoc data across the 120 museums and the more than 1 billion biological specimens and (c) facilitating access to laboratory equipment for analysis of relevant material.


MIRRI: Active development of diagnostic tests
MIRRI, 07.04.2020
France

The Microbial Research Resource Infrastructure (MIRRI) covers different European Biological Resource Centres. Within the French node of MIRRI, one of the units of the Centre de Resources Biologiques de l'Institut Pasteur (CRBIP), namely the biobank of human samples (ICAReB), is actively working in relation to the SARS-CoV2 outbreak. They are receiving hundreds of blood samples per day from different geographical areas and institutions in France. These samples are prepared, cryopreserved and distributed to Pasteurian researchers developing novel diagnostic tests, specifically serological tests.


ESS-DEMAX: Priority access
ESS, 03.04.2020

The European Spallation Source (ESS) Deuteration and Macromolecular Crystallisation Support Lab, DEMAX, is already functioning on a small scale and we can provide expertise, advice, and limited materials to support research to address the critical need to understand and shut down the coronavirus disease, COVID-19. ESS will prioritise requests for the production of deuterated proteins, DNA, and some types of small molecules such as detergents and lipids that are all potentially useful for neutron scattering studies of viral components. In addition, as experienced scientists in small angle scattering, chemistry, structural biology, reflectometry, and crystallography we can also assist with structural modeling and data analysis.


EMBL-EBI: Biomedical data resources
EMBL-EBI, 31.03.2020

In response to the current outbreak of COVID-19, EMBL-EBI is gathering and sharing data resources as they become available. Researchers can now see a breakdown of relevant data hosted at EMBL-EBI on the Pathogen Portal. This includes sequences of outbreak isolates and records relating to coronavirus biology. Researchers can also find instructions for submitting data to the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). EMBL has recognised the urgency to identify and consolidate needs around creating a European COVID-19 Data Platform for data/information exchange, connected to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC.