BBMRI-ERIC Expert Centres are non-profit organisations that represent a novel public-private partnership model. They are responsible for the analysis of samples in the country of origin under internationally standardised conditions and for the generation of primary data.

BBMRI-ERIC Expert Centres integrate pre-competitive public and private research and development activities by providing access not only to biological samples and medical data but also to the broad spectrum of medical and scientific expertise related to the samples, data, and their analysis.

CBmed – BBMRI-ERIC Expert Centre

CBmed, an Austrian, publicly funded competence center, links excellent research infrastructure, scientific expertise, medical knowledge,  and national and international industry partners for systematic medical biomarker research.

CBmed brings together scientific experts with leading pharmaceutical, diagnostic, medical-technology and IT industry partners. In addition, CBmed has a strong network in the area of biobanking including the largest biobank in Europe, Biobank Graz, and the European biobanking network BBMRI-ERIC.

CBmed research projects will identify new biomarkers, validate potential biomarkers and conduct translational biomarker research for products to be used in clinical practice.

CBmed will develop easily applicable, targeted, minimally invasive biomarkers for better diagnosis, better therapy monitoring and more personalised treatment.

ATMA Platform – BBMRI-ERIC Expert Centre

Focusing on biomarker verification and validation, ATMA Platform is an expert centre designed to accelerate clinical research.

Currently being set up by BBMRI.it, ATMA-EC is a technological hub to carry out research projects that can overcome the difficulties that established models of collaboration between academia and industry sometimes face.

Public and private research are integrated as well as development activities by providing access to biological samples and data, and to a broad spectrum of medical and scientific expertise related to the archiving and analysis of tissue samples.

ATMA-EC also includes a hub in Naples that focuses on radiomics and other biobanking infrastructures that can collect and correlate data from different fields, such as biology, clinical microbiology, virology and diagnostic imaging procedures.

In March 2019 the BBMRI-ERIC ATMA Expert Centre enlarged the biomarker R&D to Virology and Microbiology, including Hiantis S.r.l. and the Accredited Pathology, Clinical Microbiology and Virology Laboratory of the University Milano –Bicocca.

Supported by Assobiotec, the Association of Biotech Industries, ATMA-EC is a consortium including the following institutions:

• Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy. Accredited Laboratory of Pathology, Clinical Microbiology and Virology
• SDN IRCCS, Naples, Italy
• Hiantis S.r.l., Milan, Italy
• Bio Check Up S.r.l., Naples, Italy
• IRCCS IRE, Rome, Italy
• Università di Bologna and IRCCS, Bologna, Italy

Genome analysis institute Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG) –  BBMRI-ERIC Expert Centre

The next important milestone in the development of BBMRI-ERIC

CNAG has been appointed an expert centre due to the high-level quality management approach for its entire operation. The objective is to minimise errors, increase productivity and insure reaching the highest standards possible to be able to fulfil the expectations of the centres’ collaborators.

Following this mission, Barcelona-based CNAG already holds an ISO 9001:2015 certification and ISO 17025:2017 accreditation and other recognitions such as the Illumina Certified Service Provider and the Agilent Exome Sequencing Certified Service Provider. The centre is also a member of Roche Sequencing Solutions® Technical Certification Program for its expertise in running the Roche SeqCap® EZ target enrichment system.

“Becoming a BBMRI-ERIC expert centre marks another milestone in our commitment to excellence. Since CNAG started its operation in 2010, one of the most important elements of the offering to our collaborators was the quality of the data. Being a BBMRI-ERIC Expert Centre adds one more quality guarantee to the offer,” says Ivo Glynne Gut, Director of CNAG.

“We are proud to welcome CNAG on board as an Expert Centre,” states Erik Steinfelder, former Director General of BBMRI-ERIC. “This is fantastic news not only for us, but also for the biobanking community as a whole. Partnering up with an organisation that has a reputation for excellence in quality management such as CNAG helps us step up our efforts in improving the total workflow, from processing samples to analysing them using cutting-edge technology for genome sequencing.”