The Ministry of Science and Innovation is in permanent contact with Public Research Organizations (OPIs) to mobilize resources, both material and personal, and prioritize these lines of research.
Some of these projects have been selected by the European calls that have been opened to deal with the coronavirus, such as the express call announced by the European Commission on January 30 and resolved on March 6, within the framework of the research program and EU innovation, Horizon 2020.
Diagnosis
In the field of diagnosis of the new coronavirus, the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) and the Institute Catalan Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2). In the first of these organisms, the National Center for Microbiology (CNM) has developed a commercial techniques validation program for the detection of SARS-CoV2 in clinical samples, which responds to the need for diagnostic kits in the shortest time. possible.
Specifically, the CNM has developed a panel of positive and negative controls, which allows analyzing the diagnostic effectiveness of commercial techniques and knowing their sensitivity, specificity and limit. In coordination with the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), the ISCIII will issue reports on the diagnostic reliability of these commercial tests, which have not yet been able to obtain the European Commission seal and whose eventual start-up may reduce possible shortage problems.
For her part, at ICN2, the professor of Superior Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC) Laura M. Lechuga leads and coordinates a project that works on the rapid diagnosis and monitoring of the coronavirus, in cooperation with Italy and France, and in which the University of Barcelona also participates as a 'partner', through the Professor Jordi Sierra. It is one of the 17 projects selected by the European Commission in the urgent call it launched on January 30 to deal with SARS-CoV2.
This project, called CONVAT, aims to offer a new device based on optical biosensing nanotechnology that will allow the coronavirus to be detected in about 30 minutes, directly from the patient's sample and without the need for analysis in clinical laboratories. Furthermore, it can be used for the analysis of different types of coronaviruses present in reservoir animals, so that a possible evolution of these viruses can be monitored and prevented and future infectious outbreaks in humans prevented. For your research, ICN2 will receive 840,843 euros and the University of Barcelona, 400,152.
Treatment
The CSIC's National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) was also selected in the European Commission's express call to participate in the 'Monoclonal Antibodies against 2019-New Coronavirus' (MANCO) project, in collaboration with CoV research groups, biotech companies and clinical research organizations from the Netherlands, Germany and France.
This project, for which the CSIC center will receive 125,000 euros, takes advantage of the experience of the research carried out in a previous one (IMI-ZAPI), which developed protective antibodies against another coronavirus (MERS-CoV). As some of the characterized antibodies recognized a region of protein S conserved in different coronaviruses, it aims to evaluate its protective efficacy against SARS-CoV2. The project will identify monoclonal antibodies to be used preventively or therapeutically in response to the epidemic caused by the new virus.
Another project in this field is the one that involves the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Center for Supercomputing (BSC-CNS), also selected in the urgent call of the European Commission, to participate in the EXSCALATE4CoV (E4C), which seeks to use the supercomputing of high performance to enhance the intelligent design of drugs 'in silico'.
Three of the most powerful computer centers in Europe are collaborating on the project. In addition to the CNS, which will receive 232,375 euros, CINECA and JÜLICH participate, as well as centers specialized in bioinformatics, molecular biology and universities in Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, the Czech Republic and Sweden. Advanced computer-aided drug design, combined with biochemical and phenotypic testing, can dramatically reduce the time required for drug creation.
Likewise, the Carlos III Health Institute is finalizing a coordinated proposal with several Spanish health centers to request funding for the extraordinary call of the EU Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI), to test the activity of different antiviral molecules against SARS-CoV2 . The Institute would coordinate the entire phase of in vitro experimentation and cell cultures to search for antiviral therapies.
Vaccines
Regarding work for the development of future vaccines, the research group led by scientists Luis Enjuanes and Isabel Sola, from the CSIC's National Center for Biotechnology, has been running a project since January 31.
The PIE-CORONAVIRUS project aims to study the pathogenesis mechanisms of the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus in order to eliminate genes responsible for virulence from its genome to obtain attenuated derivatives, which are vaccine candidates. It has 225,000 euros of CSIC's own funds and has requested financing in several international collaborations.
The research group has already completed the design of the strategy to reconstruct the virus genome from chemically synthesized DNA fragments, and hopes to complete the engineering of the entire genome and the attenuated variants in about six to eight weeks. In this way, they hope to have vaccine candidates within three months, which will be evaluated first in pre-clinical mouse trials, to determine if they are effective and safe, before being studied in phase I clinical trials in people.
In addition, this center participates in several international calls. Among them, he has presented a proposal together with the team of the Spanish doctor Adolfo García-Sastre, from the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai (New York), to Centers of Excellence for influenza research and surveillance (CEIRS) -NIH.
Clinical and epidemiological studies The Carlos III Health Institute is also involved in a European project that aims to establish a multidisciplinary network for research, prevention and control of COVID-19. The I-MOVE-COVID-19 is one of the projects financed by the European Commission in its recent express call, for which the ISCIII will receive 210,000 euros, and which also includes the Institute of Public and Occupational Health of Navarra (with 110,000 euros).
The I-MOVE will analyze the coronavirus in humans and in different animal species, study its expansion and identify different ways to control the contagion. Specifically, ISCIII researchers will participate in primary and hospital care networks and will carry out clinical, virological and epidemiological studies.
In addition, ISCIII has decided to expand the objectives of various research projects that it had already granted, to enhance its role in managing the coronavirus alert, assuming increased costs. Thus, different projects have included SARS-CoV2 in their field of study to analyze its effect on the most vulnerable populations, investigate possible co-infections with other respiratory viruses such as influenza, and carry out efficacy studies of new vaccines in development.
Transfer
Several Spanish pharmaceutical companies have expressed interest in maintaining collaborations with the National Center for Biotechnology and are already producing results.
Specifically, the group led by Luis Enjuanes, together with Isabel Sola and Sonia Zúñiga, has shown in vitro that the drug Aplidin (plitidepsin), discovered by the Spanish pharmaceutical company Pharmamar, and used to treat multiple myeloma, stops the multiplication of HcoV-229E coronavirus, which belongs to the family of the new coronavirus that has caused a pandemic. Now, researchers are going to study whether this drug is also effective against the SARS coronavirus, very similar to SARS-CoV2, which causes COVID-19 disease.
Collaboration is also maintained with Grifols for the evaluation of the neutralizing activity of immunoglobulins against the new coronavirus.