ABOUT NIDB

        The COVID-19 pandemic cause serious damage in human health and economy. Taiwan realized that establishing a national infectious diseases bank is very important when facing unpredictable epidemics. A complete disease bank can play the role of pathogen collector, investigator and provider. Only when the infectious diseases are well-known, scientists can further develop the therapeutic and prevention strategies. Therefore, the government supports and encourages National Health Research Institutes to establish National Infectious Diseases Bank (NIDB).

        One important mission of NIDB is to collect representative and significant infectious pathogens, clinical specimens and derivatives of pathogen from cooperated international and domestic culture collection banks and domestic hospitals. The well-kept materials will be investigated by researchers in NIDB and will be distributed to academia and industries for further researches and developments for diagnosis, therapy, and prevention of infectious diseases. In addition, NIDB has other missions such as providing pathogen-related consultant service, sequencing service, immunocompromised animal model research service and so on. Through the establishment of NIDB, we hope to enhance the capability of fighting against the outbreak of infectious diseases.
　　Being a member of the World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) and the Asian Consortium For the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Microbial Resources (ACM) may facilitate NIDB establishing international collaborations.