IRCCS Istituto Nazionale per le Malattie Infettive “Lazzaro Spallanzani” (INMI)

History and mission

The National Institute for Infectious Diseases (INMI) “Lazzaro Spallanzani” is a public institution operating since 1936 in the field of infectious diseases, appointed as Research Institute in 1996.
Besides clinical care facility, INMI has epidemiologic, diagnostic, and research facilities, all placed in a large campus.

The mission of INMI institute is
• to provide state of the art clinical care for patients with infectious diseases
• to assist in the development of a global response to emerging/re-emerging diseases
• to promote integration among clinical, epidemiological and pre-clinical research with the aim of advancing diagnosis, care and prevention of infectious diseases.

INMI is a WHO collaborative Center for clinical care, diagnosis, response and training on “Highly Infectious Diseases, and is leader, or co-leader, of several internationally funded research projects. INMI laboratories are appointed as national or regional reference center for numerous infectious diseases. The most recent appointment from Regional Health Authorities is reference center for neurological diseases of infectious origin.

Clinical facility

Clinical care facility design is compliant with high isolation measures, and personnel is specifically trained to work with patients with highly contagious and dangerous diseases. Diagnostic laboratories cover the whole spectrum of infectious microorganisms; thanks to translational research activity, advanced diagnostic tools are available for clinical application.

Research facility

INMI research agenda is mainly focused on emerging and re-emerging infections, including those causing neurological manifestations, blood-borne pathogens, tuberculosis and tropical diseases. On these topics INMI covers basic, pathogenetic, diagnostic, epidemiologic, care/treatment and prevention research. Cutting-edge equipment and know-how are available, for proteomics, ultrastructural imaging, phenotypic and functional immunological studies, classical and next generation sequencing, bioinformatics. High bio-containment facilities, and a biorepository for collection of samples from patients with infectious diseases, virus and bacterial strains and cell lines are available.