Annual Report 2020
Annual Report 2020
Facing down challenges
It goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year in many ways. The COVID-19 world pandemic seriously disrupted the planned activities at VIB and beyond.
We have had to change the way we live and work, which has had a significant impact on many aspects of our daily lives. Yet, through it all, VIB kept performing at a very high level.
Many of our labs buzzed with activity. From exploring the repurposing of drugs to mitigate severe COVID-19 infection to developing bespoke antibodies, VIB researchers continued to push the envelope. Moreover, the Grand Challenges Program funded three clinical trials that will improve our understanding of COVID-19 and take the first steps to new treatment options.
But beyond the labs, the urgency and severity of the crisis also stirred many people into action. An internal VIB taskforce quickly and efficiently set up collaborations with external partners and VIB volunteers to scale up Belgium’s testing capacity. In four weeks’ time, VIB – together with four partners (UGent, UZ Gent, Biogazelle, Anacura) – set up a test platform, where five teams performed around the clock to process 6,000 tests daily. From April to June 2020, this consortium carried out 120,000 tests and, as such, contributed to testing half of the samples from all Belgian residential care centers.
It was equally encouraging to see how rapidly VIB as an institute adapted to a new situation. During the lockdown, teleworking became standard. The VIB laboratories never went into complete lockdown, given the living material they work with (laboratory animals, cell cultures, plants, etc.). Depending on how the lockdowns evolved, the VIB research centers arranged the lab activities in shifts to accommodate the ongoing research projects. Conferences and training moved online with great success, and the IT infrastructure accommodated all these changes with admirable proficiency.
We also said (a virtual) goodbye to Johan Cardoen and welcomed Jérôme Van Biervliet as the new co- managing director.
Last but not least, VIB has managed to launch no less than five exceptional start-ups in 2020: MRM Health (a forward-looking interdisciplinary combination of microbiology, bioinformatics, and inflammatory disease expertise), Flamingo Therapeutics (development of new cancer therapeutics), Dualyx (focus on bi-specific antibodies for auto-immune diseases), ExeVir Bio (a direct result of VIB’s COVID-19 research and the tireless work of the Discovery Sciences’ team), and Animab (which will expand VIB’s biotech fingerprint into the field of animal health).
Part of VIB’s mission is to have a substantial, positive social impact. In 2020, we certainly lived up to it!