European radiobiology archives (ERA)

The European Radiobiological Archives are a BfS service function for radiobiological research. Information and data from past animal experiments are made available to the scientific community.

A large number of long-term studies on experimental animals exposed to ionising radiation have been performed world-wide in the past. Large-scale experiments involving tens of thousands of animals are unlikely ever to be conducted again for financial and ethical reasons. The possibility of returning to mine the existing data in new ways adds enormous added value to the original funding of these studies. The retrospective analysis of earlier animal studies is an important resource for modelling and evaluating new risk parameters. With great foresight the European Union (EU) and European Late Effects Project (EULEP) have created a database collecting and collating data from almost all of the available animal radiation biology studies carried out in Europe. This database is called the European Radiobiology Archives (ERA). Comparable archiving activities were initiated in the USA (establishing the National Radiobiology Archives (NRA)) and in Japan (establishing the Japanese Radiobiology Archives (JRA)). The three archives include data from almost all radiobiological animal experiments carried out between 1960 and 1998 in Europe, USA and Japan. This information is jointly available in the ERA database. ERA alone includes 151 studies from 21 labs.

The German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) jointly conducted a project funded by the European Community, named ERA-PRO. The project was aimed to update and promote the European Radiobiological Archives and to transfer the existing database into a version which is accessible on the internet. A user-friendly interface was installed which allows the interested scientist to search and retrieve relevant information either on study description, on groups included in single studies, or even on individual animals. This information allows further analyses of data from radiobiological experiments with animals, mostly mice.

More Information

• Access to the European Radiological Archives (ERA)

You will need a user ID. If you do not have one, please, contact era@bfs.de.