Preparatory and ChEMBL/EVA Bridge

Wellcome and EMBL-EBI are redesigning how the world’s most-used open databases for molecular biology are built and funded, starting with a two-year partnership that begins in January 2024. These databases—such as ChEMBL, which tracks drug-like molecules, and the European Variation Archive (EVA), which catalogues human genetic differences—are the invisible infrastructure that underpins much of modern biomedical research. Researchers everywhere rely on them to find drug targets, interpret genetic variants, and design experiments. But the current model, largely centred on European and North American institutions, is not set up to serve a truly global research community. The problem is that as human health challenges become more interconnected, the data resources need to reflect a wider range of populations, priorities, and perspectives. If this partnership succeeds, it will prototype a fairer, more inclusive funding and governance model for life-science data infrastructure. That could mean databases that are more responsive to researchers in low- and middle-income countries, and more resilient to shifts in funding. The immediate work involves maintaining ChEMBL and EVA while testing new ways to engage global partners. The longer-term change would be a data ecosystem that supports both fundamental discovery and translational medicine on a genuinely global scale.