Switzerland to Become First World Health Organization BioHub

Spiez, a quaint small town close to the Bernese Alps in Switzerland, will host the first World Health Organization BioHub facility. The objective of this initiative is the safe receipt, storage, and distribution of pathogens to laboratories worldwide to make the fight against them more efficient.

On May 24, 2021, in his speech at the 74th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset called for “close international collaboration to ensure the timely sharing of epidemiological and clinical data as well as biological materials.”

One step in that direction was taken on the same day, when Berset and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the WHO and Switzerland by which the WHO took Switzerland up on its offer to provide space and knowledge for a global pathogen exchange. According to the MoU, Switzerland will make available its Biocontainment Laboratory in Spiez as WHO’s first BioHub.

Currently, most pathogen sharing is done bilaterally between countries and on an ad hoc basis, which can be slow and can leave some countries without access to the benefits and tools. The BioHub is set up to change this and to allow WHO member states to share biological materials with and via the facility, which will serve as a center for the safe receipt, sequencing, storage, and preparation of pathogens for distribution to other laboratories. The objective is to inform risk assessments and sustain global preparedness against pathogens, like the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which may cause an epidemic or even a pandemic.

The BioHub facility is part of WHO’s broader BioHub system for the use of biological materials, which is not limited to state laboratories but also open to other qualified entities such as manufacturers.