GHTM researchers are marking presence at the Encontro Ciência’22. In the next three days, they will join several researchers to share the work that have been developed with both national and international scientists.
In the first day of the scientific meeting, Carla Sousa, member of the Vector-borne diseases and pathogens (VBD) GHTM-group; Ana Paula Arez and Ana Tavares, the general and technical coordinators of the GHTM/IHMT NOVA biobank – Biotropical Resources, made a demonstration regarding “VIASEF – In Vivo Arthropod Security Facility” and “NOVA Biobank – Creating Value in Infectious Diseases Research”, respectively.
“In Vivo Arthropod Security Facility – VIASEF” as part of the “Portuguese Roadmap of Research Infrastructures”, provides the possibility of conducting studies on a wide range of arthropods and the pathogens they transmit. Access to VIASEF is open to the academic, scientific and industry communities, in order to foster scientific excellence and support technological innovation both at national and international levels.
VIASEF is a high security infrastructure that offers the possibility to develop in vivo studies with autochthonous (e.g. sandflies), invasive (e.g. Aedes aegypti), exotic (e.g. tsetse flies) or transgenic arthropod vectors. It also provides safe laboratorial conditions to develop projects with human pathogens (vector-borne and others), including those classified as biohazard level 3 (e.g. chikungunya virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis multi-resistance strains or SARS-CoV-2).
In turn, BIOTROP has the vision to contribute to the role of banks of biological products as a tool at the service of a healthy society and asserting itself as a reference structure for collections of biological products associated with infectious diseases and tropical regions. This infrastructure is prepared to receive and provide biological samples according to good laboratory practices and standard operating procedures, in strict compliance with ethical and legal frameworks. BIOTROP is also part of the Portuguese Roadmap of Research Infrastructures, as member of two networks – Portuguese microBiological Resources Center Network (Pt-mBRCN/MIRRI-PT) and National Biobanks Infrastructure (Biobanco.pt) – and is aligned with other local biobank of the R&D Units of NOVA, the Comprehensive Health Research Centre (CHAIN) biobank from CEDOC/NMS.
The collections and associated data are available on request (microbiome, mosquitoes, ticks, samples of human origin positive for the presence of pathogens, etc). BIOTROP provides a set of services such as samples organization, SOPs development, sample processing and preservation, nucleic acids extraction, quantitative or qualitative detection and bioinformatics analysis (or other services on request). This NOVA biobank provide access to a wide array of high-quality biological specimens and data to the infectious diseases community of researchers, and therefore constitutes a major asset to strengthen research quality and encourage national and international collaborations.
This annual meeting of science is taking place at Centro de Congressos de Lisboa. Communications and on-demand videos are also available.