ReViRAnt is your gateway to basic, preclinical, translational, and clinical research on respiratory infections.Our applied approach for the respiratory virus repository is unique due to the combination of the following characteristics:
- Close collaboration between the research labs of the University of Antwerp and the University hospital to provide not only viruses, but also access to research and clinical expertise
- Nasopharyngeal samples from virus-infected infants
- Virus isolation within 2-4 hours of collecting patient samples, thus guaranteeing a high success rate in virus isolation, also for sensitive respiratory viruses
- Ability and facility to collect large number of viruses to capture the phenotypic heterogeneity of viruses
- Existing bank of viruses from recent years and constantly updated, thus covering the currently circulating strains
- Viruses at low passage, thereby minimizing the occurrence of cell culture adaptations
- Possession of both phenotypic data and genomic sequencing data
- Anonymized patient characteristics and disease severity is available
- Ongoing collaborations with relevant industry, academic groups, and research institutions