ISTITUTO ZOOPROFILATTICO SPERIMENTALE DELL'ABRUZZO E DEL MOLISE G CAPORALE

Their core work

IZS Teramo is one of Italy's national veterinary public health institutes, specializing in animal disease surveillance, food safety, and zoonosis control. They conduct laboratory diagnostics, epidemiological research, and risk assessment for infectious animal diseases — from bluetongue virus to African swine fever. Their work sits at the intersection of animal health, food safety, and public health, making them a key node in Europe's One Health infrastructure. They serve as both a research body and a reference laboratory, providing governments and the livestock industry with actionable disease intelligence.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 work (2017) was narrowly focused on a single vector-borne disease — bluetongue virus and its Culicoides insect vectors. By 2018-2019, they shifted dramatically toward broad, integrated approaches: One Health frameworks covering foodborne zoonoses, AMR, and cross-border disease coordination. This mirrors the wider European policy shift from studying individual diseases in isolation toward systemic animal-human-food health integration.

Moving from single-disease research toward multi-hazard One Health coordination, positioning them for future EU partnerships on pandemic preparedness and cross-border disease surveillance.

How they like to work

IZS Teramo operates exclusively as a consortium participant — they have not coordinated any H2020 projects, which is typical for national veterinary institutes that contribute deep domain expertise rather than project management. With 89 unique partners across 31 countries from just 3 projects, they work in very large consortia (One Health EJP alone likely accounts for most of this network). This broad network makes them well-connected and easy to integrate into new consortia, though they are unlikely to take on coordination responsibilities.

Despite only 3 projects, they have collaborated with 89 distinct partners across 31 countries — an exceptionally wide network driven by large pan-European joint programmes. Their reach spans nearly all EU member states and likely several associated countries.

What sets them apart

As a government veterinary institute (Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale), they occupy a unique position between academic research and regulatory enforcement — they don't just study diseases, they run the official surveillance and diagnostics that inform Italian and EU animal health policy. Their participation in both disease-specific research (PALE-Blu) and broad One Health joint programmes gives them rare breadth across the veterinary-food-public health chain. For consortium builders, they bring laboratory infrastructure, regulatory credibility, and direct links to national animal health authorities.

Highlights from their portfolio

• One Health EJP
  Their largest project (EUR 1.5M) and a flagship European Joint Programme connecting food safety, animal health, and AMR across dozens of institutions — shows their central role in EU One Health infrastructure.
• PALE-Blu
  Focused study of bluetongue pathogen-livestock-environment interactions, demonstrating deep capability in vector-borne disease epidemiology and field research.
• ICRAD
  International coordination effort for infectious animal disease research, including vaccinology and diagnostics — signals their role in shaping future research agendas beyond the EU.