After a PhD in virology, Christine Prat worked in the diagnostics field in various companies based in Oxford, UK, specialising in Knowledge Transfer between academia and industry. She then took the position of Deputy Director of the French National Reference Centre on Arboviruses, at the Armed Forces Biomedical Research Institute, managing a team on diagnostics for surveillance and control, and liaising with Public Health authorities. In 2015, she joined the H2020 funded European Consortium the "European Virus Archive", (EVA), now being its Operational Director. In Marseille, at the laboratory Unité des Virus Emergents, she is the Operational Director of the Biological Resource Centre, leading the path to ISO 20387 certification. She is also Secretary of the French Expert Group on Nagoya protocol EU registry for biobanks.

1. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
1

2. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
The European Virus Archive
Non for profit organization grouping 46 virology laboratories worldwide
Missions:
Online catalogue: www.european-virus-archive.com
@EVAg_EU

3. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
Emerging virus causing an outbreak
Preparedness: what is the main objective ?
Reduce response time
???
Urgency to gather information

4. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
Emerging virus causing an outbreak
•Positive controls
•Reference material
Diagnostics
kits
•Strains
Therapeutics
Antivirals
vaccines
•Strains
•Genomic material
•Biotechnology tools
Research
Hours/Days
Days/Weeks
Days/Weeks/Months
DSI
DSI
DSI
DSI
DSI
DSI
Urgency to gather information

5. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
COVID-19 case study
DSI
DSI
DSI
From Coutard et al 2020
DSI

6. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
COVID-19 case study
1 orders allows to run 9 600 diagnostic tests
… It was possible to run a staggering total of more than 14 Million diagnostic
tests in the next 3 months after the release of the genome sequence thanks to
our distribution.

7. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
COVID-19 case study
How the diagnostic kit was conceived:
Conclusions:
} Preparedness work: might have been something else than SARS
} « artificial »sequences: not used at the end, but still, accessed in the
current ABS sense
From Corman et al 2020

8. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
Consequences of different policy options
Decoupling
Access to DSI and
Benefit Sharing
Hybrid
(Bilateral and
Multilateral)
Bilateral
Guarantees « Open
Science »
Allows Capacity
Building globally
Time efficient
Allows for trials and
errors
Slowing down access to ressources
Limitations in distribution of the material
Risk of political/economical polarization of
exchanges in times of crisis
Less scientists working on developing counter-
measures

9. The EVA GLOBAL project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon,
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.871029
How the current DSI model generates benefit sharing
The EVA model during COVID-19:
} Non monetary benefits sharing:
- Sharing of sequence data
- Sharing of material
- Collaboration in a research and development project
- Sharing or transfer of research and development results (training, equipments…)
12
providing
countries
97
beneficiaries
countries
73%
Free of
charge
53%
To LMIC
From Sett et al 2022