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The INFRAPLUS’s kick-off took place over two productive days in Munich. With lively discussions and concrete plans, we have set the stage for INFRAFRONTIER’s expansion in state-of-the-art in vivo models, innovative in vitro models, preclinical services, and data analysis. All set to get started!
INFRAFRONTIER received the ERIC plate in a ceremony led by Anna Panagopoulou, the Director at DG Research & Innovation. After a powerful speech, she gave the floor to Martin Hrabe de Angelis, who explained the work and impact of INFRAFRONTIER. Also LOFAR ERIC was honoured. With these new additions, Europe now counts with 28 ERICs. Watch the ceremony here!
The latest collaboration of INFRAFRONTIER with the German Mouse Clinic is available on line. This publication shows how standardising quality of life and wellbeing assessment protocols in mouse research can improve the relevance of these studies to human clinical trials. Supported by the CORBEL project.
The second ‘live’ Charlie Consortium Meeting brought together global experts on rare diseases linked to lysine metabolism disorders at Helmholtz Munich, co-organised by the German Mouse Clinic and INFRAFRONTIER.
INFRAFRONTIER joint the Be Open about Animal Research Day (#BOARD24) celebration on 3 May. We are proud to stand together with over 1000 institutions in promoting transparency in animal research, and emphasise our commitment to animal welfare through three dedicated cards highlighting our 3R practices.
INFRAFRONTIER and IMPC joined forces at The Allied Genetics Conference in Washington DC to promote their resources and portfolio in front of several model communities. Apart from being an excellent opportunity to establish connections with new researchers, we were fortunate to coincide with partners and colleagues.
INFRAFRONTIER recently engaged with rare disease experts at the RARE 2023 Conference in Budapest. Lively discussions at our booth focused on disease models, while sessions explored various perspectives, from early diagnosis biomarkers to palliative care. A fabulous opportunity to engage with this scientific community.
After a long time in the making, INFRAFRONTIER has officially become an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium). This significant milestone emphasises INFRAFRONTIER’s dedication to excellence and collaboration across Europe in pioneering research initiatives. It would not have been possible without the support of the Founding Members: Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece and Sweden. Exciting times coming!
The EOSC-Life consortium publishes an article in the EMBO Journal, outlining effective measures to boost the utilization and sustainability of data resources. The study also presents twelve recommendations for handling research data in alignment with FAIR principles.
Under the canSERV Open Call, researchers are invited to apply for a portfolio of services covering the entire oncology developmental pipeline, with the participation of 9 INFRAFRONTIER partners providing in vivo services. Deadline: 4 January 2023
A new publication of INFRAFRONTIER in Mammalian Genome is available on line now. Get an overview of the latest INFRAFRONTIER advancements, including services, resources, and technical developments.
The ESHG brought together the most innovative research projects in human genetics. Thanks to representatives from the Mary Lyon Centre at MRC Harwell, INFRAFRONTIER had the opportunity to inform researchers of their expansive service portfolio.
INFRAFRONTIER services and resources on rare diseases were presented in RE(ACT) Congress in March. The stand attracted the attention of many visitors who came to find out more about the infrastructure.
The International Conference of Research Infrastructures 2022 (ICRI 2022) will take place from 19-21 October in Brno, Czech Republic.
The 17th Transgenic Technology Meeting (TT2022), organized by the International Society of Transgenic Technology (ISTT) will take place on 17 – 20 September 2022 in Helsinki, Finland.
Using genetically sterile Prm1 males is a recognised alternative to surgical vasectomy when generating pseudopregnant females for embryo transfer programmes.
Virtual mindmap shows the way through a diverse network of research options for Rare Diseases
The European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD), coordinating 130 institutions from 35 countries, is the largest international network of activities to fight the more than 7,000 known rare diseases. Launched by the European Commission in 2019, the programme´s vital goal is to create a comprehensive, sustainable European and worldwide “rare diseases ecosystem” – allowing a virtuous circle between research, care and medical innovation.
The interest in the scientific community to fight the pandemic using mouse models is remarkably high. In December 2020, INFRAFONTIER launched an attractive free-of-charge service for the biomedical research community fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic: The COVID-19 Therapeutics Pipeline Trans-national Access (TA) Call offered academic researchers to test their novel therapeutics and vaccine candidates in a preclinical Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL3) pipeline using COVID-19 optimized mouse models
On 22 February 2021, thirty universities, research organizations and biomedical companies in France signed the “French transparency charter on the use of animals for scientific and regulatory purposes”
A new EBRA cluster will coordinate the predictive use of animal models in brain research
The European Union and its member states have been investing in research to better understand the human brain and its disorders for many years.
How can genetically modified mouse models help scientists with their research on cancer – one of the predominant causes of human deaths in Europe and worldwide? This was the working question dominating the 4th Annual Conference of the INFRAFRONTIER Research Infrastructure, held virtually on 7 and 8 October 2020.
INFRAFRONTIER, the European Research Infrastructure for developing, phenotyping, archiving, and distribution of genetically modified mouse and rat models, has decided to postpone its annual scientific conference. The INFRAFRONTIER Conference 2020 with its focus on “Targeting Cancer with Animal Models” had originally been scheduled for 22 to 24 June 2020 in Brussels, Belgium will now be postponed to 7 to 9 October 2020, same location.
Munich / Stockholm – Karolinska Institutet, one of the world´s leading medical universities selecting the Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine every year, is now a co-owner of INFRAFRONTIER GmbH.
High quality in research data and strict quality standards and procedures have always had a top priority in the EMMA consortium and the INFRAFRONTIER research infrastructure from their very first day.
However, a consortium-wide expert meeting about a complete system of Quality Management (QM) for the whole consortium: This was a premiere in the INFRAFRONTIER QM Workshop on 8 and 9 October 2019 in Munich.
“The application of artificial intelligence is the next big step to discover new ground in our massive biomedical data sets. We have to make use of this disruptive technology now”, says Prof. Dr. Martin Hrabĕ de Angelis, director at the Helmholtz Center Munich and coordinator of the pan-European project “INFRAFRONTIER”.
GV-SOLAS, the German Society for Laboratory Animal Research, is Europe´s oldest and largest association of animal research experts of all kind –scientists, veterinary doctors, animal keepers, and operators of animal facilities. Its annual meeting 2018 was held on 12 to 14 September in Munich.
In its second Open Call CORBEL (Coordinated Research Infrastructures Building Enduring Life-science services ) invites researchers from the biomedical field to apply to access technologies and services offered by more than 20 facilities from 10 different research infrastructures (RIs) across Europe, including INFRAFRONTIER.
The human microbiome and its immense impact on the health conditions of the human body has become a vital topic in international biomedical research – as shown lately in a interesting article in the British daily The Guardian.
In 2018, two big European meetings co-organized by INFRAFRONTIER will cover the role of animal research for studying the microbiome:
In a new Trans-national Access Call INFRAFRONTIER offers open access to its infrastructure and expertise for researchers who need rat mutant models to be generated for their scientific aims. It’s the first time that the European research infrastructure for modeling human diseases via mammalian genomes expands its unique services to generate not only mouse, but rat models for its users.
The RItrain Project, launched a unique international management development programme.
INFRAFRONTIER, the European Research Infrastructure for phenotyping and archiving of model mammalian genomes is opening a call to facilitate access for the wider biomedical research community to the unique infrastructure and scientific expertise of the INFRAFRONTIER mouse clinics. INFRAFRONTIER offers the testing of mouse mutant lines through a broad based primary phenotyping pipeline in all the major adult organ systems and most areas of major human disease. Access will be granted on the basis of scientific excellence and supports the development and in depth characterisation of new mouse models for investigating gene function and human pathophysiology. INFRAFRONTIER will provide open access to all newly developed disease models and phenotyping data.
CORBEL – Coordinated Research Infrastructures Building Enduring Life-science services – is an EC Horizon2020 project uniting 11 Biological and Medical Science Research Infrastructures (RIs). In CORBEL, the participating RIs expand their cooperation in order to harmonise researchers’ access to their cutting-edge technologies and services by establishing a sustainable platform of aligned services that will enable faster admission to and a wider portfolio of technologies and services to boost research projects.
INFRAFRONTIER service charges will be changing as of 01 August 2016. New pricing will be posted and take effect as of 01 August 2016.
We will honor previously quoted rates for registrations of interest (ROI) and projects with ongoing services initiated prior to 01 August. Projects initiated after 01 August will be quoted and billed with the new rates.
On 28 and 29 June the INFRAFRONTIER Industry & Innovation Workshop took place in Munich. 88 participants from Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, among them 23 representatives from industry, discussed technological innovations, how biopharma uses mammalian models in drug discovery and how the resources and services provided by the INFRAFRONTIER Research Infrastructure and the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) can support translational research.
The next issue of the Journal ‘Mammalian Genome’ will be dedicated to the study of ageing and age-related diseases. It contains an overview article on INFRAFRONTIER as a European resource for studying the functional basis of human disease. The article highlights the platforms and resources that INFRAFRONTIER provides for ageing research, an more generally how INFRAFRONTIER promotes the global sharing of high-quality resources and data and thus contributes to data reproducibility and animal welfare.
INFRAFRONTIER will be present at the ISTT 13th Transgenic Technology Meeting, March 20-23, Prague, Czech Republic.
You are welcome to visit us at stand 25 and learn more about INFRAFRONTIER!
The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) officially launched its Roadmap 2016 Report on an event held in Amsterdam on 10 March 2016 organised under the Dutch EU Presidency.
The Report lists 29 “ESFRI Landmarks”, one of them is INFRAFRONTIER. ESFRI Landmarks are research infrastructures that were implemented or started implementation before 2015 and are now considered “major elements of competitiveness of the European Research Area”.
The INFRAFRONTIER GmbH has opened postitions. If you are a highly-motivated person and want to leave your mark in a small and innovative team, please check our job advertisements.
INFRAFRONTIER is partner in two new Horizon 2020 projects that started on 01 September: CORBEL and RItrain.
CORBEL brings together the ESFRI Biological and Medical Research Infrastructures (BMS RI) to develop common services and harmonised access procedures to facilitate groundbreaking interdisciplinary research in the area of the life sciences. Together, the BMS RI cover the entire range from the discovery of basic biological mechanisms to applied medical translation.
On July 21-22, INFRAFRONTIER IPAD-MD project was kicked-off, in a two-day meeting in Munich, Germany.
The IPAD-MD project, Research Infrastructures for Phenotyping, Archiving and Distribution of Mouse Diseases Models, will address the coordination and cooperation between INFRAFRONTIER and complementary research infrastructures world-wide contributing to the global effort of IMPC, has been funded under the EC Horizon 2020 Programme.
The INFRAFRONTIER GmbH is hiring. If you are a highly-motivated person and want to leave your mark in a small and innovative team, please check our job advertisements.
EURORDIS, the alliance of European patient organisations for rare diseases, campains for a European Year on Rare Diseases 2019. This should raise awareness for the 30 million Europeans who suffer from a rare disease and encourage research that focuses on these rare, mostly unknown, seriously debilitating and often life-threatening diseases.
INFRAFRONTIER, provider of resources and services for rare diseases research, strongly supports the EURORDIS campaign.
On 19 November 2014 the Council of the INFRAFRONTIER GmbH met in Munich for its third regular meeting. The Council discussed and approved the work programme, budget and the overall scientific strategy for the INFRAFRONTIER GmbH in 2015.
A publication describing the INFRAFRONTIER service portfolio and the web portal that gives access to all of them has been accepted for the next Database Issue of Nucleic Acids Research. Advance access is available on the NAR webpage.
Cryoport, Inc. the only end-to-end cryogenic logistics solutions provider, entered into an agreement with the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA), a part of INFRAFRONTIER, the European Research Infrastructure for phenotyping and archiving of model mammalian genomes
On 07 May 2014 the Council of the INFRAFRONTIER GmbH met in Munich. This was the first meeting of the Council after the accession of France, Czech Republic, Finland and Greece to the INFRAFRONTIER GmbH on 05 December 2013.
The INFRAFRONTIER IMPC workshop: Promoting the international exchange of mouse mutant resources, took place in Munich, Germany, 08-09 May 2014.
The main objectives of the workshop were to discuss how to simplify the international exchange of mouse mutant resources and to define the procedural changes to achieve it, to review the key issues facing the mouse community and mouse repositories as well as focus on IP issues and to present best practices in sharing research tools
The INFRAFRONTIER IMPC Phenotyping Workshop took place in San Francisco, California, USA, 19 – 20 March 2014, attracting the participation of around 60 international delegates.
The main aims of the Phenotyping Workshop were to assess tests, progress and phenotype detection, as well as to discuss the test implementation for IMPC Phase II.
The Phenotyping Workshop was funded through the INFRAFRONTIER InfraCoMP Project.
Second phenotyping call of the EC FP7 funded INFRAFRONTIER-I3 project open until March 15, 2014.
A total of 22 mouse mutant lines can be characterised through a broad based primary phenotyping pipeline in all the major adult organ systems and most areas of major human disease.
In a formal act authenticated by a notary in Munich, four founding members acquired shares of the INFRAFRONTIER GmbH: the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) from France, the Biomedical Sciences Research Center ‘Alexander Fleming’ from Greece, the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Acedemy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and the University of Oulu in Finland.
On 02 to 04 December, INFRAFRONTIER holds an international workshop in Rome, together with the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) and the International Knockout Mouse Konsortium (IKMC). More than 200 participants will participate.
The aim of the Rome meeting is to discuss how researchers from different scientific fields and from industry can benefit from the large-scale mouse genomics initiatives INFRAFRONTIER, the IMPC and the IKMC, and to obtain feedback from the research community on future needs and improvements.
The meeting is funded through the EC-funded projects InfraCoMP and EUCOMTOOLS, the Italian National Research Council (CNR) generously provides the meeting venue.
FP7 funded INFRAFRONTIER-I3 project (2013-2016) supports eligible customers with a free of charge mouse production service implemented as a Transnational Access (TA) activity providing a total of 30 access units. The access unit is defined by the production of a minimum of two heterozygous mice carrying the targeted gene allele of choice from the corresponding validated gene-targeted ES cell clone(s).
INFRAFRONTIER project was included in a selection of ESFRI projects, currently in implementation phase, to feature in the ESFRI brochure on ‘European Research Infrastructures with global impact’, published for the 10th anniversary of ESFRI. With the publication of this brochure, ESFRI intents to make the general public more broadly aware of the ESFRI itself and of the goals of the different ESFRI Research Infrastructures.
