With the support of RedCLARA and the coordinated efforts of national research and education networks, the region is accelerating access to infrastructure and specialist support for applying AI to bioinformatics.

The Early Adopters BIO+IA Programme — part of the bioinformatics and artificial intelligence testbed enabled by the BELLA II project — is progressing along its roadmap and establishing itself as a concrete pathway for Latin American teams to access, under real research conditions, artificial intelligence capabilities applied to bioinformatics.

The BIO+IA testbed functions as a regional platform for capturing and processing specialised information to accelerate scientific discovery. It integrates generative AI, logical AI and structural bioinformatics to support, for example, the identification of molecular interaction networks and the development of research into gene regulation, molecular signalling, complex diseases, precision medicine and antimicrobial resistance.

The call for proposals, open throughout March, generated widespread regional interest: 151 people from 15 countries registered and 72 participated in the launch webinar. Final proposals were received from Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

Following technical and scientific evaluation, five high-potential initiatives were selected. Each is backed by a National Research and Education Network (RNIE), a member of RedCLARA: a key link in connecting the teams to the regional infrastructure of BELLA II and enabling their access to the testbed.

• The role of mitochondrial candidates in drug resistance in triple-negative breast cancer — Universidad del Desarrollo, in collaboration with the University of Chile, with support from REUNA (Chile).
• Molecular screening system using extracellular vesicles for breast cancer risk detection — Ixtapaluca Regional High-Speciality Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, with support from CUDI (Mexico).
• Identification of genetic sequences associated with mercury resistance (MerIA) — Chimborazo Higher Polytechnic School, with support from CEDIA (Ecuador).
• Therapeutic repositioning strategies for liver disease — Autonomous University of Bucaramanga, with support from RENATA (Colombia), in collaboration with the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC).
• Design and discovery of smart peptides with antitumour and antimicrobial potential — Autonomous University of Bucaramanga, with support from RENATA (Colombia).

Together, the projects address areas of high social and scientific impact — oncology, antimicrobial resistance, liver health and translational biomedicine — and will test, within a shared regional environment, new hypotheses and AI-based analytical workflows.

The programme is currently in its phase of training, adoption and use of the platform. Over the next 10 weeks, the teams will receive specialised training in the BIO+AI environment, working methodologies, artificial intelligence tools and technical-scientific support. The focus of this stage will be on strengthening capabilities in AI applied to bioinformatics, using specialised pipelines for biological research, refining scientific hypotheses, and experimenting with assisted analysis and result review. The process will culminate in Demo Day—a regional closing event scheduled for late June 2026—with preparations beginning in May.

Early Adopters BIO+IA is made possible thanks to the coordination driven by RedCLARA within the framework of BELLA II, in partnership with the University of the Andes in Venezuela (ULA), and with the active coordination of the RNIE networks in Colombia (RENATA), Mexico (CUDI) and Chile (REUNA). This cooperation between networks — the backbone of the testbed model — has connected the selected teams with regional infrastructure and provided the necessary support to carry out their research.

With this cohort, BELLA II marks a significant step forward: moving from connectivity to collaborative experimentation, enabling cutting-edge AI and bioinformatics to be utilised by institutions across the region. The initiative also represents a first step towards consolidating a Latin American community of practice in BIO+AI, capable of addressing high-impact scientific challenges through local talent and networking.