Four More Projects Awarded in COVID-19 Call

Since the foundation of Top Sector LSH, it has supported numerous projects with research into coronaviruses. At the end of March, Health~Holland set up a call for COVID-19 related research proposals. In May we announced that in only one month four projects were awarded by the Health~Holland board. One week later, three more projects were awarded. Now, more good news is to follow; four more projects have been awarded and granted PPP Allowance to start their research.

Eighteen other COVID-19 research proposals have been submitted and are currently under evaluation of the evaluation committee. Below the four awarded projects are outlined shortly.

  1. The immune system reaction to COVID-19
    This project started on the first of June 2020 and will take 18 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are Erasmus Medical Center and Cytek Biosciences. The goal of this project is to understand how inflammation and immune dysfunction, which are both found during COVID-19 disease, contribute to the severity of the disease.
  2. RNA-based therapy to protect the lungs and kidneys from COVID-19
    This project starts on the first of July 2020 and will take 18 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are Leiden University Medical Center and Hybridize Pharma B.V. The goal of this project is to develop short RNA-nucleotide sequences complementary to these regulatory sequences and thereby inhibit viral replication. These tools will confer clinicians with a first line of defense to protect the lungs and kidneys against the deleterious effects of COVID-19 and future coronavirus infections.
  3. Development of an intranasal vaccine against COVID-19
    This project started on the first of May 2020 and will take 14 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are Wageningen Bioveterinary Research, part of Wageningen University and Research, The Institute for Translational Vaccinology (Intravacc) and Utrecht University. The goal of this project is to develop an intranasal vaccine against COVID-19 consisting of a safe Newcastle disease virus (NDV) vector that expresses the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
  4. Benefit of valsartan in corona infection
    This project started on 15 April 2020 and will take 8 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands Heart Institute and Novartis. The goal of this project is to study if valsartan can prevent acute lung injury in COVID-19 infection.
Four More Projects Awarded in COVID-19 Call

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