Global Biological Resources Centre Network (GBRCN)
Meeting
14 & 15 May 2009

 

The Micoteca da Universidade do Minho (MUM) - www.micoteca.deb.uminho.pt - is a fungal culture collection held in the Biological Engineering Centre of the University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. One of our aims is to operate at an international level by following national and international guidelines. As a matter of consequence MUM has been involved in international organisations and initiatives as ECCO (www.eccosite.org), WFCC (www.wfcc.info), GBIF (http://www.gbif.org and http://biomonitor.ist.utl.pt/gbif/) and the task-force on BRCs launched by OECD.
This latter initiative started in 2001 with the introduction of the new concepts of repositories and providers of high quality biological materials and information - Biological Resource Centres (BRCs) - in order to meet modern demands for the further advancement of biotechnology and life sciences. BRCs are considered to be one of the key elements for sustainable international scientific infrastructure, which is necessary to underpin successful delivery of the benefits of biotechnology, whether within the health sector, the industrial sector or other sectors, and in turn ensure that these advances help drive growth (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/55/48/2487422.pdf).
In 2001 experts from OECD countries came together and agreed a consensus report that called upon national governments to undertake a number of actions to bring the BRC concept into being in concert with the international scientific community. This report presents the outcome of discussions held by the OECD member countries, together with a number of key partner countries, under the auspices of an expert Task Force established by the OECD Working Party on Biotechnology, following recommendations made in the 2001 report. Specifically, a series of best practices for BRCs were developed in extensive consultation with the scientific community
(http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/7/13/38777417.pdf).
As a step forward, last November 2008, a demonstrative project was estabilised to assess the concept of Global Biological Resources Centres Network (GBRCN) and, amongst others aims, to develop measures to implement the general and domain specific best practices developed by the OECD Biological Resource Centre Task Force in an appropriate quality management environment. Consequently, MUM as a partner of this project, is very pleased to organise and host the European regional meeting of the GBRCN project and gives the opportunity to the participants to attend on the day before the MALDI-TOF ICMS for Microbial Characterisation and Identification Workshop.
The organisers wish to welcome you to the GBRCN Meeting and we look forward to seeing you all in May in Portugal.