From Iss and Siad comes ViVa, the biobank of 5 million human, animal and environmental samples

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The partnership between the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and Siad, the Bergamo-based industrial gas, engineering, healthcare, natural gas and LPG company, will create one of the largest biobanks in our country. It will be called ViVa and will have the highest quality standards, to allow transversal research that takes into account all the factors that determine our health. Inside it will contain 5 million human, animal and environmental samples. The project will be developed by Siad and has a value of 3.5 million euros.

As explained by its managing director, Bernardo Sestini, «the Siad group was born in 1927 from the passion for research and innovation of its founders, prof. Quirino and Prof. Bernardo Sestini, and has always supported the scientific world through scholarships, dissemination projects for institutions and hospitals. By making the best technologies and the high skills present in the group available to Italian scientific research, we confirm a constant and collaborative relationship with the institutions and the community. Today, Siad is oriented towards the world of Life Sciences, and regenerative and personalized medicine». With ViVa, the ambition, adds Sestini, “is to boost research and become a model and a point of reference for the biobanking sector”.

The new biobank will be built in the ISS headquarters on an area of ​​700 square meters and will be equipped with advanced technologies and equipment for the preparation, analysis and conservation of samples and related data, capable of making it a point of reference for biomedical research. The entire facility will be divided into three areas: one intended for samples collected according to standards that guarantee the highest sample quality. A second area is the conservation of historical samples, i.e. those already collected, which do not always possess all the quality requirements but which could nonetheless represent an important information asset for future research. The third is instead an area defined as disaster recovery, intended to host samples from other structures facing critical situations for transitory periods. The ViVa biobank will guarantee the highest standards of environmental sustainability, through intelligent management technologies and the use of renewable energies that help reduce the structure’s environmental impact. Furthermore, the design allows flexibility and modularity capable of making it adaptable to the various research needs and evolving technologies.

“Biobanks are an indispensable tool for present and future research and this creation, thanks to the support of Siad, will help keep ISS and Italian public health at the forefront,” says ISS president Silvio Brusaferro. «Moreover, a biobank of this level, which guarantees perfect conservation of biological samples and related data, through the application of the highest quality standards – concludes Brusaferro – is the fundamental prerequisite for the quality and reliability of the resulting research.