Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)

The Italian National Research Council (CNR) is the largest multidisciplinary public research institution in Italy. It carries out advanced research in all sectors of knowledge and promotes its applications for the scientific and socio-economic development of Italy. CNR operates all over the country, with over 90 institutes disseminating its competences and promoting cooperation with local and international institutions and companies.

CNR is a founding partner of both the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA) and INFRAFRONTIER. It has established its Italian node and the new mouse clinic at the `A. Buzzati-Traverso´ campus, in Monterotondo near Rome, where the Italian Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is also located.

Since June 2019, these infrastructure are part of the new CNR’s Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (IBBC). Both are integrated components of INFRAFRONTIER and the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC), for generating, phenotyping, cryopreserving and disseminating mutant models of human diseases, together with their bioinformatics resources. Advanced imaging modalities are also major research areas, in collaboration with CNR’s multi-sited cellular/biological node of EuroBioImaging.

Complete infrastructures, equipment and services are readily available to international users for mouse mutant model production, phenotypic and advanced imaging analysis, cryopreservation and distribution, genotypic and phenotypic data curation and disease model annotation, as well as related training activities. With over 1,000 produced and/or archived mutant models and capacity up to 50,000 live animals and 100,000 frozen germplasm samples the Monterotondo facilities are the largest in Italy and uniquely combine in-house development, analysis, processing and quality control of the banked strains.