SPring-8, the large synchrotron radiation facility

Release Date

07 Apr, 2020

7 April, 2020
Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute（JASRI）

Calling for general proposals at SPring-8 is, in principle, held on a regular basis, but "Urgent Proposals," which are non-proprietary rapid access proposals for extremely important public and urgent research is also available. It will not require the Beamtime Fee. These applications are promptly reviewed in a timely manner regardless of the regular deadline for submissions.
On the other hand, experiments for proprietary use will be dealt with by the time-designated proprietary proposals (with Beamtime Fee). These applications submitted will also be reviewed promptly.

With urgent proposals, we will accept the research subjects aimed at analyzing and overcoming COVID-19, more specifically, searching for antiviral drugs and these molecular designs. Therefore, the target samples of the research will be proteins and/or nucleic acids, which derived from SARS-CoV-2 and its related viruses, and the drug candidates related to them.
In any kinds of the proposals, the safety of experiments and samples has been reviewed in advance by the relevant committees in SPring-8. Therefore, the same standards for safety also apply in these proposals. Our MX-beamlines only allow experiments under bio-safety level 1 (BSL-1).

Now the user operation is suspended. The users from outside of the campus cannot come into the SPring-8. All these experiments are only conducted using mail-in service, ZOO system, or remote access. For complete information, please contact us.

Summary
・SPring-8 will accept rapid access proposals that promote COVID-19 research for the meanwhile with Urgent or Time-Designated proposals.
・Regarding safety, only samples that can be handled under BSL-1 are covered at the SPring-8 MX-beamlines.