Istituto Nazionale Malattie Infettive L. Spallanzani

The National Institute for Infectious Diseases (INMI) ‘Lazzaro Spallanzani’ is a public research institution dedicated to infectious diseases operating since 1936. INMI is recognized as a leader in infectious diseases research, and ranked as a top level institution for publication impact in the fields of infectious diseases, epidemiology and microbiology.

INMI is the Italian National Referral Centre for the management and diagnosis of highly transmissible infectious diseases. Since 2003 INMI is member of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (WHO), and in 2009 it was appointed as a WHO collaborative center for clinical care, diagnosis, response and training on ‘Highly Infectious Diseases’.

The paradigm of INMIs activities is to hold in a strict connection, i.e. in physical proximity, both patient care and laboratory facilities, to have concentrated in one single institution all professional expertise and structures required to complete the cycle of management of patients with highly infectious diseases. INMI research agenda is mainly focused on emerging and re-emerging infections, blood-borne pathogens (incl. HIV, HBV and HCV infections and Ebola), Tuberculosis and tropical diseases. On these topics INMI covers basic, pathogenic, diagnostic, epidemiologic, care/treatment and prevention research.

Within the EVIDENT project INMI will be directly involved in the field work, in the follow up of patients and in the testing of the immune-response and antibodies production. INMI is Work Package Leader in WP2, primary regarding the biomarker analysis, differential diagnosis and relevance of the co-infections in the clinical outcome. INMI will also collaborate in the investigation on the infectivity of different body fluids and their usage as a diagnostic tool.