Personalised treatments tailored to the individual patient, faster responses to epidemics, and a deeper understanding of how human cells work — all of this depends on our ability to connect vast amounts of biological and health data and harness the power of artificial intelligence. This is exactly the ambition of ELIXIR IMPACT, a joint initiative of Czech and Swiss scientists launched in January 2026.

With a total budget of CZK 69.5 million (approx. CHF 2.7 million) — of which 85% is funded by the Swiss side — the project brings together seven leading Czech institutions and the world-renowned SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. Over the next three years, the partners will strengthen their “digital infrastructure for life” — interconnected databases, AI tools, and a secure computational environment that will serve as a European proof-of-concept for cross-border analyses – to further unlock new insights from biomedical data.

A world-class partnership

The strength of the project lies in the partner’s unique combination of expertise in life-science data. This ranges from providing databases used by millions of researchers worldwide each year— among them SIB Resource UniProt, the world’s most important reference for proteins – to molecular modelling, pathogen surveillance, and the secure stewardship of sensitive data.

Led by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague). the Czech consortium includes Palacký University Olomouc, the Czech Technical University in Prague, Masaryk University, the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, the University of South Bohemia, and the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

“We are bringing together the very best that Czechia and Switzerland have to offer in the European life-science research area. For Czech science, this is an exceptional opportunity to gain visibility and help shape the future of data-driven European medicine,” says Prof. Jiří Vondrášek of IOCB Prague, Director of ELIXIR CZ and principal investigator of the project.

“The complementary expertise of the Swiss and Czech teams — from global-scale biodata resources to trustworthy AI and secure computing systems — will deliver transformative outcomes for science and society extending far beyond the project’s duration,” says Prof. Christophe Dessimoz, executive director of SIB, Swiss team lead, and internationally recognised expert in computational biology.

What the project will deliver for patients and society

The project’s ambitions are concrete and touch all of us:

• Personalised medicine. Strengthened integration of knowledge on small molecules, lipids, and metabolic processes in the human body will pave the way for treatments tailored to each patient and their unique biology.
• Faster response to epidemics. A new Czech Pathogens Portal — building on the successful national COVID-19 data portal — and expanded Swiss Pathogens Portal will link information about human, animal, and environmental health (the One Health approach), enabling scientists to respond to new threats faster and in a more coordinated way.
• Secure sharing of sensitive data. The project will lay the foundations for a European infrastructure that allows researchers to analyse sensitive genomic data across borders — without the data ever leaving its country of origin. This is a key prerequisite for international cooperation in the medicine of the future.

Researchers expect that the tools and databases developed in the project will be used by more than 10,000 scientists every year around the world. The project also includes training activities that will help Czech and Swiss scientists master the latest artificial intelligence and big-data approaches in biomedicine.

A strategic investment in Europe’s future

ELIXIR IMPACT is funded by the Swiss–Czech Cooperation Programme (call 8K2502 of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports) and will run until the end of 2028. The project builds on long-standing cooperation between Czech and Swiss teams within the European research infrastructure ELIXIR and strengthens the position of both countries in key European initiatives for personalised medicine, public health, and the trustworthy use of health data. For the Czech Republic, it represents one of the most significant bilateral scientific collaborations of recent years.

The project at a glance

Duration: 1 January 2026 – 31 December 2028
Total budget: CZK 69,464,294 (85 % Swiss contribution, 15 % Czech state budget)
Principal investigator: Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prof. Jiří Vondrášek)
Czech Partners: Palacký University Olomouc, the Czech Technical University in Prague, Masaryk University, the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, the University of South Bohemia, and the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Swiss partner: SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (Prof. Christophe Dessimoz)
Funding: Swiss–Czech Cooperation Programme, call 8K2502, Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports