Six 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. Since then, seven more projects were awarded. This week we announce the good news that six more projects have been granted PPP Allowance to start their research.

Below the six awarded projects are outlined shortly.​

1. Digital Eye Health; towards remote monitoring in eyecare
   This project starts of the first of July 2020 and will take 30 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are University Medical Center Utrecht and Easee B.V. The goal of this project is to rapidly make available remote eye care for patients and their doctors in the current COVID-19 crisis, to support availability and accessibility of eye care in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, and to improve the existing tool into a clinically validated and integrated platform, enabling the heralded sustainable digital transition in eye health.
2. Home blood collection for COVID-19 serology testing
   This project started on the first of June 2020 and will take 8 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are The Netherlands Cancer Institute and SelfSafeSure Blood Collection Devices B.V. The goal of this project is to develop and produce a final finger blood collection system that meets all legal requirements for certification and is technically validated for best practices COVID-19 serology tests readily available on medical laboratories.
3. Viral pneumonia: from COVID-19 to beyond
   This project started on the first of June 2020 and will take 16 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are University Medical Center Utrecht, Radboud University and Flowview Diagnostics. The goal of this project is to improve the diagnosis of viral pneumonia’s, but particularly the prognosis of disease development focusing on a prediction model for those patients that end up in the ICU.
4. A new treatment for traumatised healthcare workers
   This project started on the first of June 2020 and will take 18 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are TNO, Kindt Clinics and SENSIKS. The goal of this project is to implement a novel treatment strategy – that yields long-term cure within a single treatment-session – for traumatised healthcare workers during COVID-19.
5. Improved diagnostics for SARS-CoV-2
   This project started on the first of June 2020 and will be completed on 20 September 2020. The consortium partners of this project are TNO, Isogen Life Science B.V., Molecular Biology Systems B.V., Stichting Kenniscentrum Papier en Karton (KCPK) and Wageningen University. The goal of this project is to develop a simple and fast diagnostic method for SARS-CoV-2, aiming at efficient and large-scale testing in society.
6. CLEAR COVID-19
   This project started on the first of June 2020 and will take 24 months to complete. The consortium partners of this project are Utrecht University Medical Center, Utrecht University, First Health Pharmaceuticals, Vossensteyn Biomedical, QVQ Holding B.V. and Single Cell Discoveries (SCD). The goal of this project is to develop epithelial models from nasal brushing obtained from SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals. These models may allow simulation of viral infections in a dish and selection of candidate antiviral drugs