On Tuesday, June 16, starting at 5 p.m. and at the I2SysBio (a joint center of the CSIC with the University of Valencia that has taken a leading role in this crisis), the Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform (PTI) CSIC Global Health organizes a presentation of the COVID projects, coordinated and executed from its research centers in the Valencian Community.

COVID-19 caught us all off guard. However, the scientific community mobilized overnight on a global scale. Not only virus or epidemic specialists, many experts from other areas were willing to collaborate, putting their knowledge at the service of a common cause: knowing the new virus in all its details and helping to confront the disease. The Valencian Community was no exception. From universities, research institutes, technology centers and companies, there has been a fabulous exchange of information to respond to emergency calls from a great diversity of public institutions or private entities.

One of the first collaborative initiatives, born in the first hours of confinement, was the PTI (Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform) Global Health of the CSIC. With the help of an email list, hundreds of scientists and technologists from all over Spain and also from other countries got in touch. Currently, from the Valencian centers of the CSIC there are 15 projects (of about 60 throughout Spain) that have received financial support through competitive calls, among others, from the Generalitat Valenciana, the Carlos III Health Institute, the Supera COVID Fund (CRUE/CSIC/Banco Santander) or from PTI Global Health itself (with the support, among others, of the Mapfre Foundation).

At the event on Tuesday, June 16, which inaugurates a cycle of CSIC presentations in various Autonomous Communities – those responsible for said projects will briefly present their objectives and preliminary results to the PTI coordinators. The topics range from the molecular details about the new coronavirus, through genomic epidemiology, epidemiological surveillance in wastewater or new more effective, faster and cheaper diagnostic methods, to the exploration of original therapeutic strategies or innovative antiviral protection materials. All of this is an extraordinary example of the enormous capacity to mobilize talent and resources on the part of the Valencian scientific and technological fabric.

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