Matchmaking for science

ADBEx (African Data & Biospecimen Exchange) is brilliant –the “Tinder” (but more useful) of sample and data sharing for African microbiome science.

We have a constantly growing and evolving culture collection in VMRC4Africa, that we would like to make available to others for potential collaboration opportunities. Through ADBEx and the link on our VMRC4Africa website, we can make our vaginal microbial isolate collection visible. This allows other researchers to find out more about our collection, and reach out to collaborate. ADBEx provides an easy to use and intuitive platform where researchers can meaningfully connect, match interests, and build partnerships around biological materials and data in an ethical, transparent way.

For us, ADBEx is more than a database—it’s a matchmaking platform for science. We use it to showcase the microbial diversity captured in our African isolate collection, which we will also eventually link with metadata and strain-level descriptions. Potential collaborators can explore our listings, request access, and initiate joint projects directly through the portal.

Into the future

Our hope is that by listing our collections on ADBEx, we can spark new partnerships - in microbial ecology, biotherapeutic development, and comparative genomics - all grounded in African data sovereignty. Looking ahead, we hope to see ADBEx expand its capabilities for data visualisation, automated partner matching, and integration with other culture collection and genomic repositories. These features will make it even easier for researchers to “find their scientific match” and co-develop innovative solutions for health and biotechnology.

We strongly encourage other research groups and biobanks to join ADBEx. Each new dataset or isolate enriches the network—helping to build a vibrant, connected ecosystem of African-led discovery.