On January 30th, 2020, the WHO declared the recent outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a public health emergency of international concern. The current COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV2, which is more infectious than the 2003 SARS-CoV. Research enhancing our knowledge and understanding of the fundamental pathogenesis and infection of SARS-CoV2 is therefore urgent, as are efforts to develop therapeutic agents to combat the spread of COVID-19, particularly as existing antiviral drugs are of limited efficiency.
In this view, the ANR, the project-based funding agency in France, launched, on 6 March 2020, a Flash COVID-19 call to mobilize the scientific communities out of 4 priorities identified by the WHO: epidemiological and translational studies; physiopathogenesis of the illness; infection prevention and control measures in healthcare settings; ethics – approaches to the response from the humanities and social sciences.
A total of 86 research projects have been selected for a total funding of 14,5M€ among which, the ESRF COVID-19 project called « COVNSP3 ».
This project targets the non-structural polyprotein 3 (Nsp3) of SARS-CoV2 as an important therapeutic target.
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About ESRF
The ESRF is the world-leading source of synchrotron and a centre of excellence for fundamental and innovation-driven research for imaging and studying the structure of matter at the atomic and nanometric scale in all fields of research. Located in Grenoble, the ESRF owes its success to the international co-operation of 22 partner nations, of which 13 are Members and 9 are Scientific Associates. Following on from 20 years of success and scientific excellence, the ESRF launched the ESRF-EBS -Extremely Brilliant Source- project (150M€ over 2015-2022). Centred on rebuilding the ESRF storage ring, EBS will deliver unprecedented source brilliance and coherence (~100x), offering scientists with a powerful new instrument to look even deeper into the structure of materials and living matter. EBS also includes the construction of new state-of-the-art beamlines, a scientific instrumentation programme with ambitious detector projects and a data management and analysis strategy.
