The overall objective will be to create and mobilise an International network of high calibre centres around a strong European group of institutes selected for their appropriate expertises, to collect, amplify, characterise, standardise, authenticate, distribute and track, mammalian and other exotic viruses. The network of EVAg laboratories including 25 institutions represents an extensive range of virological disciplines. The architecture of the consortium is based on the association of capacities accessible to the partners but also to any end-users through the EVAg web-based catalogue. This concept has been elaborated and tested for its efficiency during the successful EVA project (FP7). The project will integrate more facilities dedicated to high risk pathogen (HRP) manipulation (1 in EVA, 13 in EVAg) The access to products derived from those HRP will be enhanced and for instance the production of diagnostic reagents will be facilitated. The new project will also provide access to high containment biosafety facilities to carry out in vivo studies of infectious disease using natural or models hosts, to look at prophylactic or therapeutic control measures and to develop materials for the evaluation of diagnostic tests, meaning an extensive capacity to service and to training. EVAg will also link up with other network-based virus-associated programmes that exist globally. However, looking further ahead, EVAg is conceived ultimately to be an open entity aiming at developing synergies and complementarity capabilities in such a way as to offer an improved access to researchers. This project will generate the largest collection of mammalian viruses in the world and move beyond the current state-of-the-art to provide an increasingly valuable resource and service to the world’s scientific community, including government health departments, higher education institutes, industry and, through information systems, the general public.

Hepatitis B (HBV) and C virus (HCV) are the most important etiologic agents of Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is the second leading cause of tumour related death in the world. The burden of HCC in developing countries represents a major challenge in global public health for the oncoming decades. Clinically, HCC patients have a very poor prognosis and high 5-year mortality rate except when detected early. As a result, HCC early detection is a critical parameter to anticipate the initiation of a tumour process, but affordable and discriminant diagnostic tools are lacking. A consortium of European and Third Countries institutions (Peru and Laos) gathered within the project COCLICAN proposes to tackle this issue through the analysis of metabolomics serum profiles of a large cohort of HBV-HBC infected patients to delineate a bunch of molecules predictive of the emergence of liver cancer. The performance of a low-cost and open-source echo-stethoscope connected to a smartphone will also be assessed, to allow early detection of tumorogenesis in health care underserved areas. This will be possible, thanks to the construction of a sustainable scientific and academic network of engineers, researchers and clinicians mobilised to exchange expertise, skills, technologies, biological material, deployed in three continents: Europe, South America and Asia. COCLICAN has been designed to improve research collaborations, to reinforce capacities, to enhance knowledge of partners and students involved in the project, but also to raise awareness of policy makers and to participate to the innovation potential improvement at the European and global levels. COCLICAN will therefore respond to the health needs of left behind populations, all around the world.