The 14th WFCC International Conference for Culture Collections (ICCC-14) has taken place in Singapore, from 17 to 21 July 2017. It was organised in parallel with the 2017 conference of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS). Both conferences took place at the prestigious venue of Marina Sand Bay Convention Centre where WFCC and IUMS shared events.
The ICCC-14 sessions were focused on services provided by culture collections to the scientific community, for customers of either public or private sectors. Topics ranged from technical problems encountered during preservation, adapted preservation techniques for consortia of micro-organisms up to legal issues with a specific session on the Nagoya Protocol implementation in microbiology.
The session on the Nagoya Protocol was chaired by BCCM and NBRC[1] experts and attracted a lot of participants. Indeed, legal obligations become more complex and culture collections must regularly adapt their operations not only to be in conformity with the many laws but also to meet the growing demand of customers for legal advices and for biological material compliant with the law. That is material that has been acquired in accordance with the laws of the country of origin and that is distributed according to all applicable laws including possible intellectual property rights.
Other sessions were dedicated to socio-economic considerations such as biosecurity and development of cost-efficient solutions for industries. A training session on biosecurity was offered to the ICCC14 participants.
ICCC-14 was also the opportunity to present newly launched activities such as the WDCM (World Data Centre for Microorganisms) GCM[2] 2.0 programme. The objective of this programme is to perform Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) of 10.000 strains in 5 years. BCCM participates actively in GCM 2.0 and is even represented in the Steering Committee of the programme.
Also running activities such as training sessions organised by WFCC members were promoted. An example of such training session open to international trainees was organised by the BCCM consortium in September 2017. These trainings include theory and hands-on sessions focused on the specific work of collections, procedures and techniques that one must master to operate a culture collection including a general approach of Quality Management Systems.
Last but not least ICCC14 was a great opportunity to meet acquainted colleagues or new faces. During ICCC14 you could extend existing collaborations and create new ones.
BCCM was represented by a team of 4 persons: Vincent Van de Perre and Philippe Desmeth from the coordination cell, Dirk Stubbe from BCCM/IHEM and Cony Decock from BCCM/MUCL. Vincent Van de Perre chaired the session on quality management and presented the ISO standardisation system, focussed on BRC activities. Dirk Stubbe was involved in the session about medically important culture collections and presented the BCCM/IHEM culture collection of biomedical fungi and its implementation of quality controls.
As president of WFCC, Philippe chaired the opening and closing ceremonies and several sessions, including the WFCC General Assembly of Members during which he presented an update on BRCs and WFCC in the 21st century. Under the leadership of Philippe Desmeth the number of WFCC members increased steadily to reach today more than 730 members in 75 countries. During his presidency WFCC started collaboration with United Nations' organisations World Health Organisation (WHO) regarding the implementation of the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness framework (PIP-framework) in coordination with the WFCC World Data Centre for Microorganisms. In touch with the Secretariat of Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) WFCC contributed as well to operational implementation as to conceptual solution design in the field of microbiology of the CBD and its Nagoya Protocol. WFCC maintains the contacts with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and continues to work also with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
After 7 years of hard work for the culture collection/BRC community, Philippe handed over the presidency of the WFCC to Dr Ipek Kurtboke from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.
Anticipating the end of his presidency, Philippe Desmeth succeeded to establish a permanent secretariat for WFCC at the Belgian Science Policy (Belspo). After approval by the Belgian State Secretary for Science Policy a small dedicated WFCC secretariat is now running at the BCCM coordination cell. For the first time in its existence, a permanent secretariat supports the activities of WFCC. The achievements of WFCC are only possible through collegial efforts, putting together the initiatives of its members and contribute to sustainable socio-economic development. Concretely, the operational efficiency of culture collections improved; making them more capable to answer the demand for expertise, microbiological material and data in biotech as well as in upstream research.