SciLifeLab has been commissioned by the government to build laboratory capacity to assist in future pandemics. The mission is to through research, competence, and technology development optimize SciLifeLab operations to support and complement other societal functions in pandemic laboratory preparedness.

“The aim of this call is to develop services and capabilities that will facilitate laboratory pandemic preparedness and address major issues within infectious diseases, such as antimicrobial resistance. Ideally these capabilities will be developed within or in close collaboration with SciLifeLab’s infrastructure, but they can also include new proposals that could eventually form new SciLifeLab infrastructure services and units”, says Staffan Svärd (Uppsala University), Scientific Director at SciLifeLab.

The purpose of the call is three-fold:

• Technology development and adaptation to enable comprehensive monitoring and detection of pathogenic organisms, monitoring immune responses, analyzing antimicrobial resistance and studies of virulence mechanisms.
• To start services and prepare pipelines and practices for pandemic data sharing capabilities together with the SciLifeLab Data Centre and national authorities that could be deployed in the case of the next pandemic.
• To acquire sustainable support in collaboration with participating institutions to create sustainability of the pandemic preparedness.

The current call for new Pandemic Laboratory Preparedness capabilities (PLP-2) is open for application from March 11 to May 2 (14:00 CET), 2022.