Project Portugal 2020

Operation code Code that identifies each project carried out using European funding.

Conclusion date

Summary

COVID-19 pandemic, resulting from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection, has caused an unprecedent public health and economic burden with more than 146 million confirmed cases and more than 3 million deaths globally, reported by the World Health Organization on April 26th, 2021 (WHO 2020). In addition to the negative impact on living and working conditions of billions of people, the world economy has suffered a severe recession as a result of widespread confinements and major restrictions. It is therefore critical to implement safe, accurate and rapid methodologies to evaluate therapeutic strategies, vaccination and evaluation of efficacy, particularly with the rise of new SARS-Cov2 variants, in order to mitigate the pandemic. The development and administration of vaccines help to protect individuals from illness or at least severe illness, however it is not known for how long the immunity achieved through the vaccines lasts nor the capacity of vaccines to protect against new variants (Hernandez et al 2021, Neagu et al 2021). Four main vaccines are already used worldwide, two mRNA and two adenovirus-vectored vaccines. mRNA vaccines have initially raised concerns in media and public in general regarding their safety, given that they were applied at a global scale for the first time. On the other hand, concerns arose by the latest thrombotic events associated with the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine (Vaxzevria) (Hernandez et al 2021). Assessing the efficacy of the current vaccines to prevent infection, and transmission for the new variants that are arising (including variants of concern (VOCs) or variant of high consequence (VOHCs)), has a critical importance at the present moment in order to stop pandemic progression. Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 demands specialized biosafety facilities and handling given the considerable and non-neglectable risks associated, not available in all institutions and research centres, increasing the associated costs. On the other hand, in the absence of drugs that effectively neutralize SARS-CoV-2, a rapid and concerted effort is needed to identify therapies, and avoid drugs with enhancer of infection activity, and evaluate the risks of the new variants using a safer methodology. Therefore, in this project we will engineer and generate pseudotyped lentiviral vectors (LVs) to express the SARS-CoV-2 - Spike protein from the currently known and emerging variants in order to: a) evaluate neutralizing activity of antibodies from previously immunized patients against the new variants of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro ; b) Identify and quantify potential drug candidates for treatment or avoidance (screen if the recently-selected drugs by us are still effective or have the same impact in the new emerging variants.