Standard references for cellular models for pandemic preparedness

In the perspective of pandemic preparedness, within REPO4EU we aim to contribute to the development of a European platform including an element providing standard references for cellular models for infectious diseases. The need of this resource became more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic and follow-up studies, for which already approved drugs were tested for their efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 ¹. Among the limitations of drug repurposing for infectious diseases is the choice of the cellular models for functional and structural in vitro assays, which are influenced by several factors, like cellular tropism, expression of cellular receptor, mechanism of viral entry, cellular susceptibility and permissibility to the viral infection ². All this information will be collected for cellular models including immortalized cell lines, primary and iPSC cells for 2D and 3D cultures and used to create reference standards. The contribution of the scientific community working on infectious diseases will be key to obtain a comprehensive list of cellular models. This resource will be implemented on an online platform including cellular models for the study of other diseases, resulting in a powerful scientific infrastructure.