Following the pioneering studies on smallpox and rabies virus by Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur, the subsequent laboratory isolation and characterisation of viruses from field samples, in the early twentieth century heralded an important era in the development of medical and veterinary microbiology. Within years of these first experiments, diagnostic and research centres were established worldwide to investigate a wide range of virus diseases that had hitherto escaped all attempts to be cultured under laboratory conditions.

During the past 70 years or more, an extremely large number of mammalian viruses have been isolated and are now routinely used for diagnostic and research purposes. Inevitably, new viruses will continue to be discovered. As our knowledge of these pathogenic viruses has accumulated so too has the number of viruses that needed to be stored as reference reagents for diagnosis, research tools with which to begin to understand the underpinning basis of virus pathogenesis and disease control through the development of vaccines and antivirals, and also for education purposes.

Some research laboratories have accumulated collections of viruses that are primarily dependent on the particular speciality of the laboratory. For example, the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (USA) maintain wide collections of mammalian virus pathogens (including Biosafety level 4 agents). Relatively large collections of arboviruses are currently held in Texas, in the UK, in Marseille, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and also in Scandinavia.

A UK National Collection of Pathogenic Viruses (NCPV) has been prepared, and European collections of rabies and influenza viruses are maintained in the UK (Veterinary Laboratories Agency, Health Protection Agency) and France (Pasteur Institute).

Biosafety level 4 (BSL4) viruses such as Ebola, Nipah etc., are maintained in specialised facilities in France, Germany, and the UK. Many other assorted viruses of medical and veterinary importance (coronaviruses, herpesviruses, retroviruses, adenoviruses, enteroviruses, etc) are held in laboratories around the world. Laboratories in Russia, China, India and south East Asia, hold their own collections many of which, to date, have been relatively inaccessible to Western laboratories. Inevitably, the process of virus standardisation, characterisation, preservation and distribution, has been relatively arbitrary and largely dependent on the particular speciality of each laboratory.

Despite the efforts of these independent research laboratories, there is currently no centre in the world that systematically coordinates these collections for the benefit of science. Thus, there is no current coordinated, quality controlled laboratory facility that can supply authenticated viruses to research and/or diagnostic laboratories, teaching centres, industries involved in the production of diagnostic reagents, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines.

For a variety of reasons, it would be virtually impossible, to establish a single laboratory, to maintain supplies of all recognised mammalian viruses. Moreover, since the establishment of the “self propagating 911 script of the NIPC1†we can no longer rely on laboratories in the USA to provide Europe with pathogenic viruses. Consequently, from the European standpoint, and indeed for the benefit of the rest of the world, a quality assured virus collection will be of paramount importance if it can serve science, the environmental and public health authorities and the needs of the pharmaceutical industry in developing new technologies for disease control, and provide material for teaching and training purposes. EVA was conceived as a means by which all of these problems could be addressed.