On behalf of COI, Professor Tao Dong hosted this webinar and introduced two distinguished guests, Professor Chengyu Jiang and Professor Alain Townsend.
The first speaker was Professor Chengyu Jiang from Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, who is Deputy Director of Institute of Basic Medicine and Professor of Peking Union Medical College. She reported on her work entitled “Repurposing Drugs and Traditional Chinese Medicine—Treatments for COVID-19”. In her talk, she introduced the methodology of drug repurposing, the recommended repurposing drugs based on the role of renin angiotensin system in COVID-19 induced ARDS and the novel form of medicine--herbal decoctosome from traditional Chinese medicine as effective drugs for COVID-19 treatment.
The second speaker was Professor Alain Townsend, who is an immunologist and Professor of Molecular Immunology in University of Oxford, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and Fellow of Royal College of Physicians (FRCP).
Professor Townsend brought us the talk “Three COVID-19 Projects: Rapid Affordable Antibody Diagnostic, SpyCatcher-RBD Based Vaccine and Isolation of Neutralising Antibodies”. Professor Townsend introduced in detail the methodology of haemagglutination based antibody diagnostic test, isolation of neutralizing mAbs from SARS-CoV-2 infected convalescent patients, as well as the research on a sub-unit vaccine for COVID-19 that does not require a cold-chain and can be produced rapidly and cheaply.
In the subsequent Q&A session, the three professors had a lively and pertinent discussion on the protection of the vaccine, the immune escape resulted from the virus mutation, the application prospects and timeline of candidate neutralizing antibodies, and the choice of therapeutic strategies.
At last, Professor Tao Dong expressed her gratitude to both speakers for their fascinating speeches and insightful discussions, and audience for taking time to participate. Our next session will be in early 2021.