A ULiège Institute

Creation of an Institute of Epidemics (InDeEp) at ULiège: consolidating achievements and preparing for the future.

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espite advances in science and medicine, epidemics remain a major threat to humanity, as recent WHO reports attest. Despite this, governments remain worryingly unprepared. Aware of their civic responsibility and the threat to humanity, ULiège scientists who have distinguished themselves in the active fight against COVID-19 have decided to pursue their action by creating, within their University, an Institute of Epidemics (InDeEp). Epidemics are understood in the broadest sense of the term, whether human or animal (epizootics), local or global (pandemics). The primary objective of this Institute, whose implementation and organization are described in the following appendix, will be to serve society, and in particular the political world, by helping to better anticipate epidemics and pandemics, and to actively combat them should they occur. In concrete terms, its main missions will be active epidemiological surveillance outside periods of crisis (which pathogens are where and how fast are they spreading?), identification of carrier animals and people, and measurement of their post-infection and post-vaccination immune responses, during declared epidemics/pandemics, and the creation of a biobank (library of infectious and non-infectious samples) accessible to all researchers in the field. The activities of the Institute of Epidemics will complement those of the Plotkin Institute (recently created on the initiative of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the University of Antwerp), whose aim is to develop new vaccines. Together, these two institutes will be able to respond to all the challenges posed by future epidemics/pandemics, and become key partners for the political authorities in the search for emergency solutions.  

Organizing an Institute is necessary because the scientists concerned are scattered throughout the University, spread across different Research Units, and only come together when urgently required. Bringing these researchers together under the banner of an Institute will make it possible to

• consolidate collaborations,
• ensure better transfer of skills between researchers,
• benefit from the effect of critical mass on individual research activities,
• set up large-scale research projects in the field of epidemics,
• draw up joint response plans for future epidemics,
• develop upstream technological solutions to the challenges posed by epidemics (diagnostic kits, sampling kits, vaccines, etc.),
• pool each researcher's international network (Figure below),
• raise awareness among political and administrative authorities,
• establish an effective network with local industry, with a view to producing technological solutions on a large scale,
• more easily obtain approvals for the diagnosis and monitoring of infectious diseases (see box),
• build the technological platforms needed to study high-risk infectious agents (BSL-3 safety laboratories, A3 animal facilities, etc.),
• and, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, reactivate the capacity to fight epidemics when they occur (data collection, epidemiological monitoring of patients, objective communication, in-depth study of infectious agents and their variants, study of immune responses in patients, implementation of plasmapherapy, development of large-scale laboratory diagnostic methods, rapid development of sampling kits, development of individual diagnostic kits such as "antigenic tests", development of vaccines, etc.).