Covid-19 vaccination and diagnosis in the CNB-CSIC
At Fundación Jesús Serra, we are firmly committed to maintaining the public's safety and health. A value that, in the face of the health crisis resulting from Covid-19, is becoming more relevant than ever.
With the aim of vindicating the work of Spanish healthcare professionals, scientists and researchers and, as a result, ensuring that society's health problems are dealt with, we have donated €350,000 to the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), which is one of the research groups leading several projects to protect the population from infection.
What is the objective of this research project?
Specifically, this contribution is going to one of the research groups of the CSIC National Centre for Biotechnology (CNB). Since January, the CNB has been leading various projects aimed at a detailed understanding of the structure of this coronavirus, developing the appropriate vaccines and protecting against the infection.
In this context, diagnostic tests have proven to be a key technology for controlling the pandemic. For this reason, during the months of confinement, four groups of the CNB-CSIC have worked round the clock to develop a serological test that in May 2020 already proved to be 99% reliable in the detection of three types of antibody and four SARS-CoV-2 virus proteins in one single blood sample.
This test came to the market, produced by the Spanish company Immunostep, and in December 2020 in ELISA kit format, which is still one of the most reliable technologies. In November 2021, an agreement was reached between the CSIC and the public health organisation Medicine Patent Pool (MPP), backed by the UN and supervised by the WHO, to transfer this technology to developing countries and thus facilitate access to tools to curb the progression of the pandemic.
