COVID-19 international research and innovation networking event

As part of the EU Global Response to the Coronavirus, the EC’s DG Research and Innovation organised an international networking event on 10 June, to promote global collaboration opportunities among Covid-19 related research projects.

Opening the event, Ms Maria Cristina Russo, Director for International Cooperation, and Dr Irene Norstedt, Acting Director responsible for health research, highlighted the importance of sharing experiences, exploring synergies and providing a platform to promote international collaboration between research teams in different parts of the world to fight the pandemic.

The online event gathered over 36 research projects funded by the EU and 12 international partner countries. In the plenary sessions, high-level ministerial representatives and funding agencies from third countries presented their respective research policy on Covid-19, with a view to joint efforts to accelerate the development of effective and affordable solutions against the virus. Dedicated thematic discussions on vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics offered the opportunity to share the content of the projects, the expected outcomes and the prospects for international cooperation.

Presentations

Morning sessions

Plenary Session 1: COVID-19 R&I response and international cooperation

• Dr. Fan Yingjie, Deputy Director General of Bureau of International Cooperation, NSFC, China
• Dr. Aikichi Iwamoto, Managing Director, Office of Project Management, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, Japan
• Prof. TAN Chorh Chuan - Executive Director, Ministry of Health (MOH) Office for Healthcare Transformation - Chief Health Scientist, MOH Singapore
• Mr Abdelouahid EZZARFI, Head of Division of Extra-University Research Coordination, Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research, Morocco
• Dr Alex Cooke, Science Counsellor, Ministry of Science, Australia

Plenary Session 2: The European Data Sharing Platform

• Dr. Guy Cochrane, Head of European Nucleotide Archive at the European Bioinformatics Institute at (European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL)

Parallel sessions

Diagnostics

• Prof. ZHOU Hongwei, Southern Medical University, Study of the early seriological biomarkers of the 2019-nCov infection, China
• Dr. Kazuhiro Sakurada, Deputy Program Director, Medical Sciences Innovation Hub Program, RIKEN “Development of precise risk prediction model for SARS-CoV-2”, Japan
• Prof. Eric Yap, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Developing and implementing rapid extraction-free COVID-19 PCR diagnostics for low resource and point-of-care settings, Singapore
• Prof. Laura M. Lechuga, Fundacio Institut Catala De Nanociencia Nanotechnologia A, – Combating 2019-nCoV: Advanced Nanobiosensing platforms for POC global diagnostics and surveillance (CONVAT), Spain
• Dr. Gyöngyi Kovács, Hanken School of Economics, - Health Emergency Response in Interconnected Systems (HERoS), Finland
• Dr. Asma EL HANNANI, UCD Eljadida, Automatic detection of COVID-19 using Artificial Intelligence on chest images, Morocco

Prevention

• Dr. Benjamin Murrell, Karlolinska Instititutet, - Nanobodies and antibodies against 2019-nCoV (CoroNAb), Sweeden
• Prof. CAO Bin, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Mechanism of lymphopenia and its impact on adaptive immune responses caused by 2019-nCoV infection, China
• Prof Wang De Yun, National University of Singapore (NUS), Investigating airway cell tropism, responses and entry receptor of COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) in elucidating its transmission and pathogenesis in the airway, Singapore
• Dr. Natascha Miljkovic, RTDS Group, - Exploration of safety, tolerability and clinical efficacy of Solnatide IMP in patients infected with the 2019 new coronavirus, (SOLNATIDE), Austria
• Prof. DENG Hongkui, Peking University, A pre-clinical study of using small molecules to treat SARS-CoV-2-induced excessive inflammation and injury, China
• Prof Rinti Banerjee, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay, Technologies for COVID -19, Mumbai, India

Treatment

• Prof. SUN Bing, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Generation of protective antibody against SARS-Cov-2 and their key residues analysis for the interaction between RBD and ACE2, China
• Prof Wang Linfa, Duke- National University of Singapore (NUS), Serological investigation of 2019-CoV infection. We have recently developed a novel serological test platform: the surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT), Singapore
• Dr. Irene Samy Fahim, ISEM Academic Program - Nile University, Egypt
• Zohra Lemkhente, UIZ Agadir, High pathogenic interaction in the case of Covid19 / SARS-Cov-2 clinical and genetic study Morocco
• Dr. Morten Agertoug Nielsen, Kobenhavns Universitet, - Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection through development and clinical testing of a novel Virus Like Particle (VLP) vaccine (Prevent nCoV), Denmark
• Dr Laurence Wilson, Team Leader, Digital Genome Engineering Team, eHealth, Health & Biosecurity, Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIRO, Developing novel algorithms and pipelines for the high-throughput analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes using phylogenetics and complementary methods, as well as a cloud-based platform for the secure sharing of COVID-19 medical and genetic information, Australia

Afternoon sessions

Plenary Session 1: COVID-19 R&I response and international cooperation

• Sarah Viehbeck, Associate Vice-President, Research Programs, Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR), Canada
• Marcelo Morales, Secretary, Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication, Brazil
• Aideé Orozco Hernández, Deputy Director General, National Council of Science and Technology, Mexico
• Pablo Nuñez, Undersecretary of Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, (MINCYT), Argentina
• Richard Gordon - Executive Director of the South African Medical Research Council, Professor, South Africa
• Ms Aisén Etcheverry, National Director of the National Agency for Research for Development, Chile

Plenary Session 2: The European Data Sharing Platform

• Dr. Amonida Zadissa, Senior Scientific Services Officer, European Bioinformatics Institute - EMBL-EBI

Parallel sessions

Diagnostics:

• Prabhat Jha, Unity Health Toronto, Acute Respiratory Mortality Surveillance (ARMS) for Coronavirus Infection (COVID-19): A globally relevant technology to strengthen mortality surveillance for acute respiratory deaths in many countries lacking complete medical certification of death, Canada
• Dr Santuza Teixeira from Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Science and innovation to face the COVID-19 pandemic, through actions linked to the diagnosis of SARS-CoV2, Brazil
• Dr Juan Manuel Alvarado, Biosensor for the detection and quantification of specific antibodies against SARS Cov-2 (COVID-19) in serum or plasma, Mexico
• Dr. Nicole Schneiderhan-Marra, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, - COVID-19-Outbreak Response combining E-health, Serolomics, Modelling, Artificial Intelligence and Implementation Research, (CORESMA), Germany
• Yves Durocher, NRC, Large-scale production of trimeric SARS-CoV2 spike antigen for serological assay, Canada
• Dr. Alexis M. Kalergis, Director del Instituto Milenio en Inmunología e Inmunoterapia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile

Prevention

• Dr. Matti Sällberg, Karlolinska Institutet, – Rapid therapy development through Open nCoronavirus Vaccine Platform (OPENCORONA), Sweden
• Darryl Falzarano, University of Saskatchewan, Animal models for SARS-CoV-2: vaccines and immune enhancement, Canada
• Jorge Elias Kalil Filho – Universidade de São Paulo; SARS-CoV2 vaccine development, Brazil
• Dra Juliana Cassataro, “Development of tools that contribute to the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection”, Argentina
• Dr. Marta Valenciano, Epiconcept, - Multidisciplinary European network for research, prevention and control of the COVID-19 Pandemic (I-MOVE-COVID-19), France

Treatment

• Dr. Silvano Coletti, Managing Director CHELONIA APPLIED SCIENCE and Project Innovation Manager - EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns for Corona Virus (EXSCALATE4COV) Switzerland
• Esper Georges Kallás – Universidade de São Paulo; Treatment of covid-19 patients with convalescent plasma transfusion: a multicentre, open, randomized and controlled study, Brazil
• Lucía Chemes “Analysis of functional elements in the SARS-C0V-2 entry system”, Argentina
• Joaquin Zuniga, Instituto Nacional de enfermedades respiratorias, Human proteases TMPRSS2 and Furin as therapeutic targets to reduce the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2: Implications in inflammatory responses associated to severe COVID-19 (MexProteases), Mexico
• Dr. Martijn Hemert, Academisch Ziekenhuis Leiden, - Swift COronavirus therapeutics Response, (SCORE), Netherlands
• Richard Leduc, Université de Sherbrooke, Preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection by targeting human type II transmembrane serine protease activity, Canada
• Professor Sir Ali Zumla, Pan-African Network for Rapid Research, Response, Relief and Preparedness for Infectious Diseases Epidemics (PANDORA-ID-NET)