Recently, Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has officially joined the European Virus Archive goes global (EVAg) project, a part of the European Horizon 2020 Research Project, after signing the consortium agreement.

In 2009, the European Virus Archive (EVA) project started. It is a project funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The overall objective was to create and mobilize a European network of high calibre centres with the appropriate expertise, to collect, amplify, characterize, standardize, authenticate, distribute and track, mammalian and other exotic viruses. The EVA project was very successful that the EVA web-based catalogue contains 1364 well-characterized viruses and about 2000 products to the scientific community. The current project EVAg (2015-2019) is aim at the largest global virus collection network. Now it includes an international group of 26 laboratories including 17 EU member state institutions and 9 non-EU institutions. EVAg objectives will meet the needs of scientists, worldwide, by generating a carefully authenticated animal virus collection that is larger than any existing repository, and readily available to all laboratories that meet approved ethical, safety and security standards.

As a core partner under this project, WIV is the only institute specializes in virology, viral pathology and virus technology, among 19 other biological and biomedical research institutes in CAS. WIV contains a virus collection center--China Center for General Viruses Culture Collection (CCGVCC), which was established by the Chinese government in 1979 as a professional center for virus collection. It was registered as a member of World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) in 1989 and admitted as one of the six national culture collection centers of pathogenic microorganism and virus strain with human-to-human transmission in 2013 by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China.

Dr. Zhihong Hu participates in the EVAg project as the leading scientist of EVAg in WIV. She is also one of the leaders of the Workgroups for Advancement Validation and Exchanges (WAVEs) in EVAg that in charge of Viruses for Biotechnology (WAVE 9). Currently Dr. Hu is the Director of Center for Bacteria and Virus Resources and Application, the Director of CCGVCC, and the group leader of the research group of Systems Virology in WIV.

Link: EVAg Website - http://global.european-virus-archive.com/