G.Immobile Molaro
ISIDORe – “Integrated Services for Infectious Disease Outbreak Research” is a large-scale project funded by the European Union. It assembles 17 european research infrastructures to offer and 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 COVID-19 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 is a new approach to epidemic preparedness research. It 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’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 project aims to show how an 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.
