The Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell’Emilia Romagna (IZSLER) is a veterinary public health body providing services and collaboration in the field of public health and food safety. IZSLER works to promote health, food safety and agri-business production activities, through the prevention of diseases, the improvement of animal welfare and the control of animal-based foodstuffs. See a presentation video on YouTube. Moreover, basic and applied research are mainly focused on the topics of the 18 National and International Reference Centers, assigned by the Italian Ministry of Health, or by International organisms as FAO and OIE.
IZSLER is currently maintaining and managing the largest veterinary biobank facility in Italy for the storage of biological resources according to biobanking “best practices” and certified ISO 9001:2015. Moreover, in 2014, IZSLER was recognized as the OIE Collaborating Centre for Veterinary Biologicals Biobank.

IZSLER Biobank of Veterinary Resources
The IZSLER Biobank of Veterinary Resources includes mainly bacteria and viruses from different animal species isolated during the routine IZSLER diagnostic activity, carried out on biological samples from farm animals, pets and wildlife and from food and feed. Moreover, IZSLER Biobank includes more than 600 cell lines from human and animal origin. All the materials enrolled in our collection are submitted to different cultural and molecular biology control tests in order to evaluate their characteristics, purity and identity.
IZSLER laboratories, that supply biological resources to IBVR, use testing methods performed according to UNI EN ISO/IEC 17025 quality system, can also offer many services as describe on the website (http://www.ibvr.org/Services.aspx).
IZSLER has the WIPO International Depositary Authority (IDA) status.

Key persons

• Dr. M. Beatrice Boniotti
  Coordinator of BVR collection. Molecular Biology Specialist. Member of the General Assembly of MIRRI-IT.
• Dr. Mario D’Incau
  IZSLER Senior Researcher. BVR Bacteria Specialist. Member of the Scientific Committee of MIRRI-IT.
• Dr. Ana Moreno
  IZSLER Senior Researcher. BVR Virus Specialist.