MOSBRI Newsletter – March 2026

The achievements of the MOSBRI project (July 2021-October 2025) have clearly demonstrated how coordinated access to advanced distributed infrastructures, combined with international collaboration, training and networking, can create lasting scientific impact and strengthen the global molecular biophysics community.

MOSBRI training and dissemination activities: a major contribution to community-building in molecular biophysics

Training and dissemination activities were central to MOSBRI’s mission.

In total, MOSBRI organised 14 training schools and courses all over Europe (https://www.mosbri.eu/events/courses/) and 4 international conferences, with a final event in Paris in 2025 (https://www.mosbri.eu/events/conferences/). Large meetings strengthened community ties, enabled direct contact between users and MOSBRI partners, and supported the development of new collaborations. Hands-on training events allow to disseminate technical skills and good practices, and to enable the emergence of a new generation of molecular biophysics experts. All in all, 955 participants from academia and industry were welcome during MOSBRI events. Abstracts, presentations, and training materials remain available on the MOSBRI website, which will stay active until the end of 2026.

MOSBRI also succeeded to establish strong synergies with the wider biophysics ecosystem, notably EBSA and several national biophysical societies, but also with other European and international organisation such as FEBS and the Protein Society.

Key outcomes of the MOSBRI Trans-National Access (TNA) programme

Over the past four years, MOSBRI has built a robust European trans-national access programme for molecular-scale biophysics, combining state-of-the-art instrumentation with expert support and an efficient selection workflow. The result has been a highly active, user-driven infrastructure that has helped researchers and innovators tackle complex biological questions with advanced biophysical methods.

MOSBRI s reach extended beyond Europe, notably through a joint TNA call with INSTRUCT-ERIC and the iNEXT-Discovery infrastructure project and a dedicated engagement with the Society of African Biophysical Societies (SABS). This collaboration highlighted the value of MOSBRI’s “proposal maturation” modality, which supported applicants in shaping strong, feasible projects. Through this pathway, two matured proposals from Africa were approved and delivered access to advanced measurements while enabling significant knowledge transfer, with lasting benefits for local teaching and capacity development.

Throughout its lifetime, MOSBRI selected 209 proposals and hosted 260 users in its 13 access providers, with a highly gender-balanced profile (54% of users were female scientists), and demonstrated global attractiveness, welcoming users from outside EU/associated countries, including Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Ethiopia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico and the USA.

MOSBRI TNA

While firmly rooted in molecular biophysics, MOSBRI served a broad scientific community. Users primarily came from Life Sciences and Chemistry, with particularly strong representation in Molecular and Structural Biology, Biochemistry, as well as Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences, confirming MOSBRI‘s role in meeting major access needs for structural and quantitative biophysics.

The publication outcome of MOSBRI – focus on the European Biophysics Journal special issue dedicated to MOSBRI

MOSBRI has so far led to no less than 67 peer-reviewed publications resulting from its TNA activities and 19 resulting from the Joint Research Activities of its partners
(see https://www.mosbri.eu/news-and-output/publications/), with several other manuscripts under review or in preparation.

In particular, the European Biophysics Journal has accepted to dedicate a full special issue to MOSBRI, in the frame of which 14 manuscripts were submitted, with 9 articles already published (see https://link.springer.com/collections/idcdjihhdb).

The eSPC open-source software suite for molecular biophysics data analysis: a sustainable legacy of MOSBRI

One of the most enduring outcomes of MOSBRI has been the development and continuous improvement of open-source software tools for biophysical data analysis by a team led by Maria Garcia Alai (European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL – Hamburg). MOSBRI brought partners together to strengthen experimental protocols and standardise data interpretation in molecular biophysics. The result is a set of user-friendly, interactive, accessible online tools that will remain available to the scientific community and continue to be developed well after the end of the project.

Central to these developments is the eSPC (Sample Preparation and Characterisation) online data analysis platform (https://spc.embl-hamburg.de/). The eSPC modules help researchers worldwide analyse data from extensively used techniques, such as Circular Dichroism (CD), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Differential Scanning Fluorimetry (DSF), Mass Photometry (MP), Micro-Scale Thermophoresis (MST), and Biolayer Interferometry (BLI); enabling reproducible data analysis standards across laboratories and instrument platforms.

In particular, through a close collaboration between Pasteur-PFBMI and EMBL-SPC, two tools have been released: Raynals, for the analysis of DLS data, and KinGenie, for the analysis of surface-based kinetics data. Another important milestone has been the development of ChiraKit, a user-friendly, open-source software tool for processing CD data. Developed by AU-SRCD and EMBL-SPC, ChiraKit enables researchers to analyse protein secondary structure, estimate peptide helicity, fit thermal and chemical unfolding models, and compare CD spectra.

Finally, thanks to all MOSBRI partners, MoltenProt, a tool allowing to extract thermodynamic parameters from DSF experimental data, has been adapted to process data produced by instruments from different manufacturers. Indeed, the MOSBRI consortium has performed a large benchmark study on DSF, that will soon lead to a reference publication, helping to define community-wide best practices and contributing to the standardisation of procedures for DSF data analysis.

Overall, the open-source eSPC tools expand the range of scientific questions that can be addressed using biophysical methods and also provide a foundation for future improvements and community-driven development.

MBDB: building a sustainable home for molecular biophysics data

One of the most important legacies of MOSBRI is the Molecular Biophysics Database (MBDB), the first dedicated FAIR repository designed specifically for raw data generated by molecular biophysics experiments.

MBDB stemmed from a need clearly identified by the scientific community. While structural biology has long benefited from established repositories such as the Protein Data Bank, no equivalent database existed for raw data from widely used biophysical techniques such as MST, SPR, BLI, ITC or Mass Photometry. Through extensive community surveys, technical development and close collaboration with data infrastructure experts, MOSBRI partners designed and implemented a solution tailored to these needs.

Officially released in January 2025, MBDB is now fully operational at https://mbdb-data.org. The database allows researchers to deposit structured metadata, experimental datasets and raw data files in a standardized, machine-readable format. Each published record receives a DOI, making datasets citable, traceable and reusable.

Interoperability has been central to the design of MBDB. The metadata structure aligns with widely used ontologies, including those of the Protein Data Bank, and incorporates persistent identifiers for institutions, funding sources and other key entities. This ensures that data deposited in MBDB can be linked, compared and reused across platforms and scientific domains. The metadata models are openly available and continue to evolve based on feedback from the community. The actual MBDB code development is also open and available at https://github.com/Molecular-Biophysics-Database.

Importantly, MBDB continues beyond MOSBRI. Sustainability has been secured through integration within the Czech National Repository Platform and support from national Open Science initiatives. The Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and its partners are committed to maintaining and further developing the database on the long term. Future developments include expansion to additional biophysical techniques, AI-assisted metadata extraction and validation, and deeper integration with EOSC-related infrastructures and analysis platforms.

MBDB is already welcoming new depositions. By sharing their raw data through MBDB, researchers increase the visibility and impact of their work, support reproducibility, and contribute to a more transparent and interoperable scientific ecosystem. Depositing data ensures that valuable measurements remain accessible and reusable for the wider community.

We warmly invite researchers to explore the platform, deposit their datasets and help shape the future of Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) data in molecular biophysics.

The MOSBRI project may have ended, but for MBDB, it is only just the beginning.

Beyond MOSBRI: the Association of Resources for Biophysical Research in Europe (ARBRE)

The molecular biophysics community-building dynamic that was successfully triggered by the MOBIEU COST Action (2016-2020) and then consolidated by the MOSBRI infrastructure project, now continues on the longer-term in the frame of an established legal entity, the Association of Resources for Biophysical Research in Europe (ARBRE https://www.arbre-biophysics.eu/).

ARBRE, a full-member society of the European Biophysical Societies’ Association (EBSA) since July 2025, is unique in its goal to bring together a vibrant pan-European community of:

  1. Members of core facilities, research infrastructures or shared resource laboratories in academia and industry
  2. Experimental scientists with a technological/methodological expertise
  3. Developers of novel technologies or instrumentation
  4. Software/database… developers
  5. Instrumentation company R&D and application scientists
  6. Contract Research Organization members
  7. Students and early-stage post-docs using biophysical instrumentation and wishing to network with experts

Membership fees currently are the sole source of income of the association. Your support is therefore very much needed to allow us to consolidate the association and develop its activities. Among them, during 2026:

To become a member: https://www.arbre-biophysics.eu/membership-fees/

2026 membership fees: Regular member 40€; early-career member (i.e. < 8 years from highest degree) 20€; non-academic member 100€
ARBRE activities are currently coordinated by 3 working groups, and we’ll be very happy to welcome you to participate actively in one or several of them:

  • Training and scientific meetings
  • Benchmarking, SOPs and Technology awareness
  • Membership & communication

Don’t hesitate to encourage your colleagues to join!

If you wish to receive our next Newsletters, go to https://www.mosbri.eu/news/ to subscribe.
The MOSBRI website will also provide you with more information about the network partners, services offered, training and many other activities of the MOSBRI programme.

This newsletter was published on Friday 20th March 2026.