An ambitious scientific project led by researchers from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) In collaboration with 40 hospitals throughout Spain, it will study the comparative genomes of the new coronavirus of patients with Covid disease19 to understand and predict the evolution and epidemiology of the virus. The study also aims to provide information to public health authorities. The generated data will be deposited in public repositories, as well as on the global NextStrain platform (nextstrain.org). The project is integrated into the new Global Health Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform, which has been launched by the CSIC to address the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus since the investigation.
The project, called Addressing unknowns of COVID-19 transmission and infection combining pathogen genomics and epidemiology to inform public health interventions, has a budget of 740,000 euros and combines genomic data, with clinical microbiology, epidemiology and phylogenesis. It is led by the researcher Iñaki Comas, from the Valencia Institute of Biomedicine (IBV-CSIC), together with the researcher Fernando González Candelas, from the Institute of Systems Integrative Biology (I2SysBio) of the CSIC and the Universitat de València, with the collaboration of the Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research (FISABIO) of the Generalitat Valenciana.
Researcher Iñaki Comas explains: "This project will allow us to incorporate genomic epidemiology as a tool to understand the course of the epidemic, how it originated and how it is evolving in time and space." He also highlights that "this research also poses the challenge of generating results that serve to inform public health authorities."
For his part, Fernando González Candelas, professor at the Universitat de València and researcher at I2SysBio and FISABIO, highlighted the geographical scale of the project, which covers hospitals throughout Spain, and points out: "Although there is a general impact on Covid- 19, the reality is that each community is in a different epidemic phase and, therefore, the medium-term solutions must be different. "
The data generated will be deposited in public repositories and in the Global NextStrain platform, from which a Spanish node has been derived (nextspain.uv.es) that is already integrating the Spanish sequence data. The platform implements very powerful visualization tools to be able to follow the evolution of the virus in space and time.
Both researchers responsible for the project, specialists in genomic epidemiology, highlight the power of combining data from various disciplines of genetics and epidemiology. "Genomic epidemiology will represent infectious diseases in the XXI century what vaccines represented in the XIX century or antibiotics in the XX century", added Iñaki Comas.
This project has been financed, along with 11 others, by the CSIC's Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform (PTI) Global Health, in which more than 150 research groups collaborate and which has the support of the Fundación MAPFRE.
Jesús Marco, Vice President of Scientific and Technical Research at the CSIC, stressed that "one of the keys to this PTI Global Health is to have a global vision that enables all aspects of the pandemic to be linked: origin, prevention, disease, containment measures , treatment, social impact, and finally the need for communication to society, particularly in education. "
The platform, promoted by the CSIC's Vice Presidency for Scientific and Technical Research, is coordinated by Margarita del Val, researcher at the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biology (CBMSO), supported by a committee of experts in the different areas involved.
