The European Bank for induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (EBiSC) is a centralized, not-for-profit, iPSC bank providing researchers across academia and industry with access to scalable, cost-efficient, and consistent high-quality tools for the development of new medicines. The EBiSC bank collects iPSC lines from European Union (EU) and non-EU countries as well as the accompanied data from individual research groups and makes these available to scientists for research use. FAIRplus delivers guidelines and tools to facilitate the application of ‘FAIR’ principles to data from selected projects, including those funded under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI – https://www.imi.europa.eu/).

Dr Andreas Kurtz, coordinator of the human Pluripotent Stem Cell registry (hPSCreg – https://hpscreg.eu/) and responsible for the EBiSC2 IT infrastructure explains: “By working with FAIRplus, we will make it easier for scientists to find the information they need and improve how we collect, store and standardize data for new cohorts of iPSC lines which are joining the EBiSC collection in the future. This will improve the efficiency and robustness of iPSC-based research and help to accelerate the path to understanding disease pathology and develop new therapeutic opportunities”.

Dr Serena Scollen, project coordinator of FAIRplus says: “The aim of the FAIRplus project is to develop methodologies and tools to increase the FAIRness of biomedical data and demonstrate the added value of the FAIR data management on selected IMI projects, such as EBiSC2. Our hope is that by helping EBiSC2 create fully FAIR datasets, we can support the research community towards more efficient and robust research.”

Notes to the editor:

FAIRplus is an IMI funded project aiming to develop tools and guidelines for making life science data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The project has 22 partners from academia and industry, and runs from January 2019 to June 2022, https://fairplus-project.eu/.

The European Bank for induced pluripotent Stem Cells (EBiSC) is a centralized, not-for-profit iPSC bank providing researchers across academia and industry with access to scalable, cost-efficient, and consistent, high-quality tools for new medicines development. Learn more at www.EBiSC.org and search the EBiSC catalogue at https://cells.ebisc.org.
EBiSC is currently in a second project phase (EBiSC2) supported by IMI and EFPIA as a public-private partnership.

EBiSC has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI2 JU) in the context of in the context of the projects EBiSC (grant agreement No 115582) and EBiSC2 (grant agreement No 821362). The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA companies. This communication reflects the views of the authors and neither IMI nor the European Union, EFPIA or any Associated Partners are liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

FAIRplus has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 802750. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA Companies. This communication reflects the views of the authors and neither IMI nor the European Union, EFPIA or any Associated Partners are liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

More information on websites:

FAIRplus: https://fairplus-project.eu/

EBiSC2: http://www.ebisc.org/

Press contacts:

Tanja Oster, EBiSC2 Project Office at ebisc2@eurtd.com

Yun-Yun Tseng, FAIRplus Communications Officer at yun-yun.tseng@elixir-europe.org