Spain will become a full member of ELIXIR, the European bioinformatics infrastructure created to optimise biological data obtained from life sciences research. Spain participates in ELIXIR through the National Bioinformatics Institute (INB), a platform of the National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII), whose central node is hosted at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO). Six INB institutions are participating in ELIXIR: the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG).

ELIXIR coordinates the storage, access and development of the software needed to understand biological data. According to ELIXIR, “for the first time, we are creating an infrastructure – a kind of highway system – that integrates research data from all corners of Europe and ensures a seamless service provision that is easily accessible to all,” and which “will facilitate discoveries that benefit humankind.”

Spain provides ELIXIR with key services in the areas of biocomputing and bioinformatics, including the assessment of bioinformatics methods, genomic and biomedical data analysis, and data mining. Furthermore, the Spanish team ELIXIR co-leads the development of the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) database, the main repository for genomic data of biomedical interest, which is an essential component of the bioinformatics infrastructure for data analysis on rare diseases.

ELIXIR has already received confirmation from the Spanish Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation, Carmen Vela, that “the inter-departmental process for the approval of the Elixir Consortium Agreement (ECA) is underway”. Spain will sign the Elixir Consortium Agreement (ECA) and will become a full member before the next ELIXIR Board meeting in April 2015.

Spanish participation in ELIXIR is based on an agreement between the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the ISCIII.

ELIXIR was officially launched in December 2013. So far, its full members are the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and 11 countries: the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.