Recently, the National Health Commission of China officially designated the China Center for Virus Culture Collection (CCVCC) in Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as a "National-Level Culture Collection Center", which is an important milestone in the development of the Center's innovative construction.

The species and samples of pathogenic microorganisms are important strategic resources for ensuring national social security, economic security and biological safety. As a national-level culture collection center, the CCVCC will be oriented to national strategic needs and will play an indispensable and important supporting role in the fields of national security, life science research, public health and virology study.

CCVCC was established in 1979 and was registered by World Federation for Culture Collections (WFCC) in 1989. In 2015, the center joined the European Virus Archive goes global (EVAg) project funded by European Commission's Horizon 2020 and successfully passed the highest rating of EVAg quality management system in October 2017. Therefore, it is a center focusing on virus resource collection, virus biotechnology, systematic virology and bioinformatics research. As an integrated center, it is also the largest virus bank in Asia.

With the official operation of the Wuhan National Biosafety (P4) laboratory of CAS, CCVCC has fully possessed the qualifications and conditions for collecting the bacteria species with the biohazard classification from level 1 to 4. In the future, the center will receive, test, store and manage bacteria species in accordance with relevant national regulations, and legally provide the bacteria species to units engaged in experimental activities of pathogenic microorganisms. In additon, the center will play a significant role in the technical research and training practice in the related area.

Wuhan Institute of Virology, CAS in Central China's Hubei province preserves more than 1,500 different strains of virus. Image by China Daily.