Overview
The Institut Pasteur de Tunis
Status and missions
Ssince its foundation more than a century ago (1893), IPT has been focusing on major infectious scourges of bacterial, parasitological, and viral etiology, including zoonotic and vector-borne diseases. Pioneering discoveries have been made at IPT by Charles Nicolle (Transmission cycles of Thyphus, toxoplasmosis, visceral leishmaniasis, concept of unapparent infections), who was awarded the 1928 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Since 1995, IPT is managed as a public health institute under the authority of the Tunisian Ministry of Health (MH). Hence, IPT’s governance involves an executive administrative board and an advisory scientific council, along with several committees and decision bodies (e.g. biosecurity, Ethics) (Figure 4). IPT has three main missions: (i) research and training, (ii) diagnosis and public health, and (iii) production of vaccines and sera.
Research
The overall research activity is carried out throughout nine research laboratories, recognized and regularly evaluated by the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR). IPT ensures training activities for various undergraduate, master and PhD programs. For the training and graduating activities IPT is officially affiliated to the University Tunis El Manar and open to all universities at the national level. Currently, IPT’s personnel involves 84 senior researchers, (50 PhD and 34 MD), 12 DVMs, 10 PharmD, more than 100 PhD students and 265 technical and administrative staff. In addition, IPT hosts 18 laboratories that are mainly involved in diagnostic and public health activities, some of which serve as national (rabies, poliomyelitis, measles, salmonella) or regional (WHO/MENA region) reference Centers (poliomyelitis, measles and human papilloma virus).
Public Health
IPT is the main Tunisian institute commissioned by the Tunisian Ministryof Health to carry out epidemiological investigations and surveillance of emerging and re-emerging diseases. As such, IPT plays a pivotal role in infectious-disease control, surveillance, and research, both in Tunisia and throughout the MENA region. Moreover, IPT is member of the Institut Pasteur International Network (IPIN), a global network involving 33 institutes distributed in 26 countries throughout the five continents. Within IPIN, IPT is very active in many thematic working groups, with strong collaborations extending beyond the MENA region. In addition, IPT serves as the unique international center for vaccination (for travellers) in Tunisia, and a center for rabies treatment and vaccination.[/pullquote ]
Manufacturing and technology transfer
Importantly, IPT is virtually the only producer in Africa of BCG vaccine and its immunotherapeutic form used for bladder cancer. IPT also provides the national biopharmaceutical market with anti-scorpions, anti-vipera and anti-rabies sera. Such a manufacturing activity is of uppermost importance as it addresses the specific national needs in vaccines and sera, and could thus serve as a lever to promote translational research and business development. In doing so, IPT has been historically committed to a smart specialization strategy. To this respect, IPT represents the main scientific partner and the major chair-holder of the Sidi-ThabetBiotechpole.
Strategy
The bulk of IPT’s public health, research, and manufacturing activities are carried out in the frame of specific national and international programs funded by various governmental (MH and MHESR) and non- governmental funding bodies, as well as donor agencies including the EC, WHO/TDR, WHO- EMRO/COMSTECH, NIH, Wellcome Trust, IPIN and IAE. During the last five years, IPT’s multi-sectoral activities have resulted in 572 published original peer reviewed articles, 647 diploma (PhD, masters, license, MD, MDV, PharmD), 35 international projects.
With regard to PHINDaccess’s main objective, IPT has been pushing during the last decade to implement multidisciplinary approaches including (among other disciplines) bioinformatics, biostatistics and modeling. A laboratory entirely dedicated to all these analytical approaches has been recently created, in complement to various independent initiatives. IPT has been increasingly involved in training activities, by organizing and/or or participating to several national and international (EMBO, JICA, IPIN) courses pertaining to NGS data analysis and protein structural modeling, NGS and genomics, metagenomics, biostatistics for Genome Wide Association testing, proteomics and drug design. IPT actively participates to the H3ABioNet, a Pan-African Bioinformatics Network project financed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and since 2015 IPT chairs the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB).
Partners and roles in the project
Institut Pasteur (IP), France
The Institut Pasteur is a private, state-approved non-profit foundation for biomedical...
Institut Pasteur (IP), France
The Institut Pasteur is a private, state-approved non-profit foundation for biomedical research that hosts some 2,600 people (scientists, engineers, technicians and administrative staff). Its mission is built upon three cornerstones:
Research: 11 research departments divided into 136 research units bringing together multidisciplinary teams of scientists work at the very forefront of infectious diseases research, and are also dedicated to immunology, molecular biology, neurosciences, development biology, stem cells, genetics and genomics.
Teaching: The Institut Pasteur Teaching Centre offers 27 courses attended each year by about 500 students from all over the world and is also a training centre for young scientists (Master or PhD fellows).
Public Health: The Institut Pasteur’s public health mission is to promote the transfer of scientific discoveries made in its research laboratories to human health applications. It lies at the heart of an International Network of 33 institutes based in 26 countries spanning everycontinent.
Institut Pasteur is involved in WP1 to WP7 of PHINDaccess. The experience and knowledge of the research group leaders already involved in the project (as well as other internationally-leading experts at Institut Pasteur, in the field of Omics data that may join the project during its implementation) will be especially important in the development of IPT data analyses (WP3) and research potential (WP4), through short-term staff exchange activities, as well as expert visits. Additionally, Institut Pasteur will be key in supporting and strengthening the networking capacities and excellence of IPT, through expert guidance in the implementation of the best strategy for liaising with regional and European stakeholders. Institut Pasteur will also be involved in the organization of joint-summer schools and workshops, thus effectively contributing tocapacity building of the younger scientists at IPT (WP2).
Centre for Genomic Regulation(CRG), Spain
The Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) is a non-profit biomedical research centre...
Centre for Genomic Regulation(CRG), Spain
The Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) is a non-profit biomedical research centre created in 2000, with the mission of discovering and advancing knowledge for the benefit of society, public health and economic prosperity. Today, with over 400 scientitsts from 43 countries, the CRG hosts 30 research groups organized in 4 multi-disciplinary research programmes, offering an integrated view of biological systems and their alterations in disease (http://www.crg.eu/en/research-0).
The scientific excellence of the centre is highlighted by its publications (in 2016: 83% in the 1st quartile; 69 publications with IF > 10) , the internationality of its staff (~65% of research staff from abroad), its funding (half of its research groups have a running ERC grant). In 2013, the CRG was awarded the HR Excellence logo by the European Commission to recognize the institute´s commitment to improve human resources policies for researchers. The CRG has proven expertise in large-scale projects focusing on pathogen-host interactions (PHI) and its impact on health and disease, spanning quantitative analysis of biological systems, identification of genetic and epidemiological mechanisms, including life-style and dietary data, linking human microbiome to common chronic diseases and elucidation of determinants of resistance to antifungal drugs in fungal pathogens.
Additionally, the CRG holds a wide range of capabilities in analysis, storage and exploitation of large-scale data, to be put to use in the framework of the project’s activities: The centre runs (jointly with the EMBL-EBI and the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre-BSC) the European Genome-phenome Archive-EGA (https://egaarchive.org/), the European reference service for securely storage and sharing of genetic and phenotypic data resulting from biomedical research projects and also operates the Centro Nacional de AnálisisGenómico (CNAG-CRG), an infrastructure of international reference for large-scale sequencing projects and data handling, which participates in large national and international collaborative research projects in areas as diverse as cancer genetics, rare disorders, host-pathogen interactions and improvement of species of agricultural interest. (http://www.cnag.crg.eu/research/projects9)
Scientists and innovation staff from CRG is involved in WP1 to WP7 of PHINDaccess.
Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG), Germany
The Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG) has been key in genome analysis and bioinformatics...
Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG), Germany
The Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG) has been key in genome analysis and bioinformatics since its involvement in the human genome sequencing project and is among the excellence centers for genome research worldwide documented by its participation in large sequencing collaborations, for example the 1000 Genomes Project.
Bioinformatics was from the very beginning pivotal for these projects and its importance has been addressed by the Max-Planck-Society by establishing its first computational biology department at the MPIMG (Prof. Vingron). Within the Max-Planck-Society the MPIMG has the role of a core facility for high-throughput sequencing and, thus, has gained a unique position with respect to sequencing technology, bioinformatics expertise and computing infrastructure. The MPIMG is performing fundamental but also applied, biomedical research and attempts to understand human (and other organisms’) biology at global scale and, thereby, contributing to the analysis of complex diseases such as cancer, diabetes or infectious diseases.
MPG team contributes to education and teaching with courses and workshops in WP2 ; To contribute to joint research activities in WP4 ; To contribute to dissemination activities through joint publications and conference contributions in WP5
Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine...
Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine. It23is one of the most important bodies for the safeguarding of public health in Germany. It serves the Federal Ministry of Health as a central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine.
These tasks are laid down in several German Federal Laws, especially in the Act on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases.The Institute combines risk research with political advice. Its most important tasks include protection against infectious diseases and the analysis of the health situation in Germany. The institute has a “rapid task force” to investigate regional outbreaks of epidemics through the use of surveys and analysis of the quality of life andhealth risks for people in Germany.
RKI will is involved in WP1 to WP4 of PHINDacces and contribute its experience in establishing and using Omics techniques as well as suitable data analytics approaches in public health research. RKI has established teaching curricula for omics analysis and will contribute these in WP2. Within the last decade, RKI centralized and rebuilt its IT and bioinformatics infrastructure to automate data analysis and to ensure that FAIR principles for data management are adequately met also for large omics data set.
This expertise will be contributed to WP3. With regard to WP 4, RKI will contribute expertise with regard to all application areas and research fields and advise and support on best practise solution and research potential. For all work packages, the main contribution will be in form of short-term staff exchange activities.
Advisory Board
South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape
Prof. Alan Christoffels
Biomedical Research Institute (IRB) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), at Barcelona (Spain)
Prof. Toni Gabaldon
Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia, Athens GA, USA
Prof. Jessica C Kissinger
