Approach has to be “more effective and targeted” than in Covid pandemic
Portuguese researchers are developing a drug against a wide range of viruses to deal with a possible new pandemic.
Biochemist Miguel Castanho has told Lusa: “We have to have antiviral drugs that are active against very diverse viruses; we also have to know how to do what we did before, which was to develop vaccines, but we have to do it in a more effective and more targeted way. Projects are underway in Portugal, both in one area and the other”.
Castanho was speaking on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organisation declaring an end to the international public health emergency caused by SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for causing Covid-19).
To mark the date, the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) – which leads the NOVIRUSES2BRAIN project : a European consortium that is trying to develop a very broad spectrum antiviral drug – brought together three biochemists, Miguel Castanho, Cláudio Soares (researchers) and Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, former Minister of Education, in a conversation, available on IMM’s YouTube, in which they talked about the lessons learnt and the possibility of a new pandemic.
Asked by Lusa if countries are prepared for a new pandemic, Miguel Castanho, IMM’s principal investigator, said that they are “better prepared” than they were before.
“Before, we were practically oblivious to pandemics. Now, for ordinary people, it’s almost as if it didn’t exist, because our lives have already resumed the rhythm and concerns that existed before the pandemic,” but researchers are still working on understanding what happened and “preparing and being ready for the next pandemic”.
He gave the example of “the problem” of bird flu caused by the H5N1 virus, in which there is “great vigilance and a series of measures” to try to prevent it from spreading to humans.
Miguel Castanho said that a flu surveillance network is carrying out H5N1 surveillance and argued that the same mechanism should be created for coronaviruses.
“These measures that are being taken to try to prevent pandemics have already drawn on the experience of the past pandemic,” but in the event of a new virus, everyone needs to know what everyone is doing, such as hospitals, civil protection and the population.
Researchers are preparing antiviral drugs of “such a broad spectrum that they can be active against a series of existing viruses” and probably for future viruses that will evolve from current ones.
The Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology (ITQB) is also developing a project led by its director and researcher, Cláudio Soares: “We are leading, together with the IMM and other teams from Portugal, Spain and the rest of Europe, two projects” aimed at creating procedures to develop biopharmaceuticals that act quickly and effectively against a new disease, he said at the meeting.
According to the World Health Organisation, Covid-19, which emerged at the end of 2019 in a Chinese province, has caused an estimated seven million deaths worldwide.
Source: LUSA
