Biocenter Finland receives full FIRI funding
Biocenter Finland received 1.83 M€ funding from the Academy of Finland’s FIRI2018 call for national research infrastructure investments. This is the full amount applied for. The received funding is for two Illumina NovaSeq 6000 sequencing instruments and an iCellis500 bioreactor system for viral vector production. All of the instruments and related services will be openly accessible to all of Finland’s ~17,000 Life Science researchers.
One of the sequencing instruments is hosted by the FIMM Genomics unit of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM, part of the Helsinki Institute of Life Science HiLIFE at University of Helsinki. The Sequencing unit is part of the HiLIFE Genomic Infrastructure platform. The other instrument will be located in the Finnish Functional Genomics Centre hosted by University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University. The Helsinki and Turku units are part of the national Biocenter Finland technology platform Genome-wide methods.
The iCellis500 bioreactor for viral vector production is to be located in the National Virus Vector Laboratory in Biocenter Kuopio, University of Eastern Finland as part of the Viral Gene transfer and cell therapy platform.
To identify the investment targets, Biocenter Finland consulted the Finnish Life Science community: ERC grantees, Academy Professors, and Centre of Excellence directors and received proposals from the Biocenter Finland technology platforms.
Biocenter Finland is currently preparing for the FIRI2019 call.
For more information on the new services, please contact the technology platform chairs:
Genome-wide methods
Janna Saarela
Viral gene transfer and cell therapy
Seppo Ylä-Herttuala