COVID-19 Research at Elettra


Projects

Elettra is partner of EXSCALATE4Cov (E4C), a public-private consortium supported by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 tender for projects to counter the Coronavirus pandemic. The E4C consortium is composed by 18 institutions from 7 European countries coordinated by Dompé Farmaceutici. The aim of E4C is twofold: to identify molecules capable of targeting the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and to develop an effective tool for countering future pandemics to be consolidated over time.

The project is leveraging EU’s supercomputing resources coupling them with some of the continent’s best life-science research labs to counter international pandemics faster and more efficiently. 

Elettra contributes to E4C by determining the crystallographic structure of some of the SARS-Cov-2 druggable proteins in complex with selected hit compounds. The activities encompass the production and crystallization of the recombinant viral proteins, by the Elettra Protein facility and by the diffraction data collection and reduction by XRD1 and XRD2 beamlines. 


Publications

Physics today
Cats and llamas could offer a path to coronavirus therapies
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4565
 
Journal of Translational Medicine
Impact of lockdown on Covid-19 case fatality rate and viral mutations spread in 7 countries in Europe and North America
https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02501-x?fbclid=IwAR0lWtku541aT063Zhxou0tZGnY8uF-lecfWHjubd2C4DpmL5_B_K2q76xg
 
Journal of Translational Medicine
Emerging SARS-CoV-2 mutation hot spots include a novel RNA-dependent-RNA polymerase variant
https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02344-6

bioRxiv
A blueprint for high affinity SARS-CoV-2 Mpro inhibitors from activity-based compound library screening guided by analysis of protein dynamics
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.14.422634

bioRxiv
Identification of inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 3CL-Pro enzymatic activity using a small molecule in-vitro repurposing screen
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.16.422677
 

Participation in international joint initiatives

LEAPS (League of European Accelerator Based Photon Sources)
Elettra is member of the LEAPS Consortium,
that recently endorsed the Manifesto for EU COVID-19 research and published a dedicated document:

SR20 Summit on COVID-19
Elettra was among the Participating organizations of the SR20 Summit on COVID-19
 
Last Updated on Thursday, 17 December 2020 11:47