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Heraldo de Aragón has recognized their work in the Tercer Milenio 2020 awards, within the category 'Science responds'
The studies aim, on the one hand, to identify the drugs that work best against this virus and, on the other, to understand why in some cases people's immune system is capable of controlling its own response and in others it is not.
Two projects led by the Aragón Health Research Institute (IIS Aragón) have been awarded in the Third Millennium Awards 2020 awarded by the Heraldo de Aragón newspaper, within the 'Science responds' category, “for its contribution to the fight against COVID-19 and in recognition of the capacity of Aragonese researchers to respond to the pandemic.”
The study 'Screening the library of drugs approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) using a 3D lung model infected by SARS-COV-2' is piloted by Pedro Baptista, researcher ARAID at the Aragón Health Research Institute (IIS Aragón), in collaboration with Santiago Ramón, from the Mycobacterial Genetics group at the University of Zaragoza, and Rosa Bolea, professor at the University of Zaragoza and researcher at the Center for Encephalopathies and Communicable Diseases Emerging. Funded by the Government of Aragon with 167.061 euros, thanks to this initiative, existing antiviral drugs and immune system modulators are tested in a human 3D lung system infected by SARS-COV-2, in order to identify the drugs that work best against this virus.
This group is developing the human lung organoid model from lung resections, performed at the Miguel Servet Hospital by Dr. García Tirado [EG1] and in collaboration with Dr. Marín's group, an activity led by postdoctoral researcher Natalia Sánchez. Thus, it has been possible to isolate lung stem cells to create mini-organs and, in the coming months, the teams led by Rosa Bolea and Juan José Badiola, director of the Center for Encephalopathies and Emerging Communicable Diseases at the University of Zaragoza, will begin the trials. of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. "This will allow us to characterize the dynamics of the disease in this new infection model, necessary to be able to evaluate the efficacy of the compounds by screening the library of 1.550 drugs approved by the American Medicines Agency, which has been donated by the group from the ARAID researcher Santiago Ramón García, with experience in other similar screening campaigns,” explains Baptista. “As they are already approved medications, any identified compound could be evaluated in the clinic in a much shorter period than the usual deadlines,” he highlights the importance of this work.
For its part, the project 'Analysis of soluble markers of immune activation and NK and CD8 T cell populations in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection' is coordinated by José Ramón Paño and Luis Martínez, from the Lozano Blesa University Clinical Hospital. /Aragón Health Research Institute; Julián Pardo, immunologist and ARAID researcher at IIS Aragón; and Eva Gálvez, from the CSIC Institute of Carbochemistry. The study seeks to understand why the immune system of some people is capable of controlling its own immune response, while in other cases this is not the case and a cytokine storm is unleashed.
The group is currently finalizing the statistical analysis of the experimental results. “Our project has reviewed in detail the response of the defenses against the virus in the blood of those patients who arrived at the hospital with suspected COVID. The objective is to try to predict their evolution, identify patients at risk of severity and thus anticipate treatment before they worsen,” the researchers explain.
About the Aragón Health Research Institute (IIS Aragón)
The IIS Aragón is the Health Research Institute of the hospital complex formed by the Teaching and University Hospitals “Hospital Clínico Universitario Lozano Blesa” and “Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet” and Primary Health Care. The University of Zaragoza and the Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences are associated with this hospital complex through different legal instruments.
The objectives of the IIS Aragón are to bring together basic and applied, clinical and health services research; create a quality research, care and teaching environment to which health professionals, training specialists and postgraduate and undergraduate students are exposed, as well as constitute the ideal place for attracting talent and the location of large scientific facilities. technological.
