Club de Madrid, with the support of the Kingold Group —Dr Chau Chak Wing’s company and long-term partner in organizing the Imperial Springs International Forums— made a donation of 184.841,06 to Spain’s public research centre, contributing to their ongoing efforts to produce a COVID-19 vaccine.
The National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), the research institution currently investigating a COVID-19 vaccine in Spain has announced that Club de Madrid and Kingold’s donation will fund the hiring of staff and the acquisition of medical supplies.
Rosa Méndez, President of Spain’s National Research Council, the umbrella institution of which the National Centre for Biotechnology is a member, thanked the Club de Madrid and Kingold for the donation. Méndez said that the donation will specifically contribute to support “the advancement of CNB-CSIC’s cutting-edge research to study the coronavirus and do so while cooperating internationally”.
Mario Mellado, director of the research centre, highlighted that “the donation entails a strong impulse for the teams at CNB-CSIC, who are absorbed in developing treatments and vaccines, which are effective against this new challenge we are facing”.
María Elena Agüero, Secretary General of Club de Madrid stated: “In front of COVID-19 pandemic, Club de Madrid decided to back science and make a donation to CSIC aimed at promoting research on SARS-CoV-2, which allows for the hiring of specialized staff and the acquisition of new material; so as to contribute to the advancement of research on the coronavirus”.
How CNBC-CSIC plans to research a COVID-19 vaccine
CNBC-CSIC will apply techniques of genetic engineering to combat the ongoing pandemic, which the institution learned while developing vaccines to fight other coronaviruses, like SARS (2002) and MERS (2012).
The National Center for Biotechnology has also considerable experience in developing potential candidates for vaccines against Ebola and Zika. As they did back then, scientists will start from the virus used to eradicate smallpox to produce a vaccine against the new coronavirus. The CNB-CSIC has recently received urgent financing from Spain and the European Union.
