ISIDORe: A New Approach to Pandemic Preparedness Research in Europe

Brussels, 24 February, 2022

ISIDORe – “Integrated Services for Infectious Disease Outbreak Research” was officially launched today. The 21M€ EU-funded large-scale project assembles an unprecedented One Health-driven, integrated portfolio of cutting-edge research services and resources, ranging from the most fundamental to the most applied, dedicated to the study of epidemic-prone diseases including SARS-CoV-2 variants.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown that there is a crucial need for a higher capacity of preparedness and responsiveness to epidemic-prone pathogens at EU and global levels. In all health crises of the 21st century, from SARS, MERS, Ebola and Zika, to the current COVID19 pandemic, there has been a lack of coordination and insufficient application of interdisciplinary approaches. These deficits need to be addressed if the next disease outbreak with a high-consequence infectious agent is going to be dealt with successfully.
ISIDORe will contribute to Europe’s readiness to any epidemic-prone pathogen through a global, integrated and preparedness-driven approach by providing free of charge access to cutting-edge resources and services to scientific user communities for supporting their research projects in the field of infectious diseases in “peaceful times” as well as during outbreaks or epidemics.
“ISIDORe can reinforce research preparedness to “Disease X” and provide a flexible framework to advance research on epidemic-prone pathogens which will be considered as an important contribution to Europe’s preparedness to emerging high-consequence pathogen outbreaks”, underlines Christian Wimmer from the newly established European authority HERA, part of the European Commission, and ISIDORe Strategic Advisory Board member.
ISIDORe’s first actions will contribute to fighting the rise of the SARS-CoV-2 variants through providing fast access to an unprecedentedly large pool of resources and services to researchers.
“The ISIDORe success in terms of results and impact will surely make a strong case for its long-term sustainability in the context of epidemic preparedness, in close collaboration with the key European and global stakeholder organisations”, added Andreas Holtel from the European Commission Research executive Agency.
“ISIDORe is a new approach to epidemic preparedness research in Europe. With our many partners, we intend to demonstrate that the establishment of this dedicated and integrated portfolio of infrastructure services for epidemic disease research can significantly impact the infectious diseases research landscape in Europe and globally and make a major contribution to European preparedness” –Jonathan Ewbank, director of ERINHA, the ISIDORe coordinator.

About ISIDORe

ISIDORe, an interdisciplinary project coordinated by ERINHA, is funded by the European Commission Horizon-Europe programme through the HERA incubator call and brings together all key European life-sciences research infrastructures and networks, as well as those in the social sciences.
The Consortium brings together 154 partners under the umbrella of INSTRUCT, EUBIOIMAGING, EUOPENSCREEN, ECRIN, EATRIS, BBMRI, INFRAFRONTIER, EMBRC, ELIXIR, ERINHA, EVAg, VETBIONET, INFRAVEC, SONAR GLOBAL, TRANSVAC, MIRRI and EMERGEN