A €125 000 EIB donation to the Foundation for Polish Science, coordinated by the EIB Institute, has allowed the laboratory of Professor Marcin Drąg (Wroclaw University of Technology) to carry out two valuable research projects that shed light on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and help society prepare for future pandemics.

The first research project showed that the substrate specificity of Mpro, the important protease (or enzyme) from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, does not change between variants. The researchers called this knowledge “extremely important for the proper design of drugs effective against all variants.”

The second research project fully characterised the human protease TMPRSS2, responsible for processing the SPIKE protein of the virus. This information will allow for a better understanding of how the virus enters into the host cell.

The results will be published in international scientific publications.

In April 2020, as part of the EIB Group’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, the EIB Institute coordinated a donation of €1 million, the largest donation ever made by the EIB Group at the time.

Half of the funds went to support R&D by renowned non-profit EU research institutes in the quest for a coronavirus vaccine and treatment: the Institut Pasteur, the National Institute for Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani, the Foundation for Polish Science and the Karolinska Institute. The other half was allocated to NGOs alleviating the impact of the pandemic.

As of March 2023, according to WHO, the COVID-19 pandemic has struck more than 760 million people worldwide and caused close to 7 million deaths.

Within the EIB Group, the EIB Institute is responsible for coordinating grants issued in response to humanitarian disasters.