The European Commission has set aside €65 million under Horizon Europe to support key open scientific databases used in developing new medicines and artificial intelligence tools in biotechnology.
The money, included in a recently amended Horizon Europe work programme, is intended to help researchers and innovators keep reliable access to information on genes, proteins and published scientific findings, the Commission announced in a release on Tuesday.
Some of these resources rely on fragmented and short-term funding, which can put long-term maintenance and continuity of service under pressure.
“Europe’s ambitions in biotechnology and AI depend on the quality of the scientific data behind them,” Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva stated.
The funding package includes plans for three grants.
One grant would allocate €19 million to GENCODE, a resource providing information on genes, with work involving the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation.
A second grant would provide €30 million to UniProt, a database that catalogues proteins and their functions, involving EMBL-EBI and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.
A third grant would allocate €8 million to Europe PMC, an online resource providing access to life sciences research papers and links to underlying data, with the work carried out by EMBL-EBI.
Extra call for other life sciences repositories
A further €8 million will be made available through an open competitive call to support other life sciences data and knowledge repositories and related scientific services.
The Commission said the support would cover specialist scientific and technical work needed to maintain and curate the resources and manage growing volumes of biological data.
Funding is subject to evaluation of grant agreements under standard Horizon Europe procedures.
The package contributes to implementing the Strategy for European Life Sciences launched in July 2025 and the European Strategy for Research and Technology Infrastructures launched in September 2025.
It also responds to concerns raised internationally, including by the Global Biodata Coalition, about the vulnerability of essential biological data resources.
