The Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases (Italian: Istituto nazionale per le malattie infettive "L. Spallanzani") is an infectious disease hospital in the Italian city of Rome. The institute is named for the eighteenth-century Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani.
It is the Italian national reference center for Ebola patients.[1]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spallanzani Institute was the first research centre in Europe to isolate the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and upload it to GenBank.[2] The team was composed of Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, Francesca Colavita, and Concetta Castilletti.[3]
The institute is working with biotech company ReiThera to test a COVID-19 vaccine candidate called GRAd-COV2, which is based on a modified gorilla adenovirus vector.[4]