CARE External Newsletter – March 2025
The final issue of our biannual newsletter is out. In this edition we share CARE’s legacy: key outcomes resulting from CARE’s five-year endeavours; a report from the recent CARE Annual Meeting in Paris; CARE’s recently published White Paper* and final Infographic as well as lLinks to all CARE news and available resources
Read the Newsletter here: CARE External Newsletter – March 2025
Successful CARE 5th and Final Annual Meeting
We just finished a fantastic fifth and final CARE annual meeting in Paris, France.
Many thanks to the organizers from Inserm and Inserm Transfert, as well as to all participants for their great presentations and inspiring discussions – demonstrating not only the significant contributions CARE has made towards pandemic preparedness in the past five years, but also how the work won’t just stop when the project wraps up at the end of March. The relationships formed through CARE will continue to bring the world closer to pandemic preparedness as the work is continued through new and ongoing initiatives and collaborations to refine our most promising assets and enhance our knowledge.
Thanks also go to the members of CARE’s Scientific and Ethics Advisory Board for being by our side and offering valuable perspectives and great advice throughout our five year journey together.
From Crisis to Innovation: How the CARE Consortium has Shaped the Future of Pandemic Response
As we approach the five-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, the CARE consortium draws to a close. Having shifted the dial towards pandemic preparedness, we now hand the baton to other organisations who continue with the cause to get the world to a better state of readiness.
Following the recent publication of our final infographic which provided an at-a-glance summary of CARE’s objectives, achievements and outcomes, we now share our more detailed white paper – a collaboratively written opinion piece which tells the story behind the infographic facts and figures, demonstrating how CARE as a collective has made real progress in identifying potential treatment approaches while advancing the world’s coronavirus knowledge base.
Read the white paper here: From Crisis to Innovation: How the CARE Consortium has Shaped the Future of Pandemic Response
Showing we still CARE – how we have moved the world closer to pandemic preparedness
As we approach the five-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, the CARE consortium draws to a close, handing the baton to other initiatives who continue the cause to get the world to a position of pandemic preparedness.
Following our series of work package infographics which were published throughout 2024, we conclude the series with a final infographic which brings together a summary of CARE: the objectives it set out with when it was rapidly mobilized in April 2020, a selection of some of its many achievements during the past five years against the shifting context of coronavirus variants, and most importantly the outcomes it has realised.
There are a number of useful resources: scientific publications, public deliverables and datasets which can be accessed on the CARE website and also reached via the infographic.
The infographic is also available here
Published in IJBM: SARS-CoV-2 Mpro oligomerization as a potential target for therapy
The CARE partner Jagiellonian University (JU) explored the mechanisms of dimerization (formation of dimers) of SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) to evaluate the impact of blocking this dimerization on the virus replication. Indeed the enzyme Mpro is critical in the virus’s replication cycle, facilitating the maturation of polyproteins into functional units. Currently available COVID-19 treatments target the Mpro.
Knowing that dimerization is indispensable for Mpro activity, JU decided to evaluate the impact of mutating two amino acids located in two different locations of the Mpro that are involved in dimerization. For this purpose, they used a range of techniques to evaluate the state (monomer or dimer) of different variants of Mpro, including biochemistry studies, biophysical analyses, together with structural, molecular dynamics, and quantum mechanical analysis.
Among the two amino acids studied (Arginine in position 4 – Arg4 – and Arginine in position 298 – Arg298), the results show that Arg4 is not the main driver for dimerization and high enzyme activity, while mutation of Arg298 completely abolishes the dimer formation and results in significant activity loss. Mutation of both arginines results in detrimental effects.
This research deepens our knowledge of the potential of inhibition of Mpro’s enzymatic activity by preventing dimerization, offering complementary approaches to limit SARS-CoV-2 virulence. This is a new perspective for the development of targeted therapies, to hit the most critical parts of the enzyme machinery. Moreover, given that the Mpro is highly conserved between different types of coronaviruses, these findings may help develop an antiviral drug effective against more than SARS-CoV-2 including potential new coronaviruses.
To learn more, click here: SARS-CoV-2 Mpro oligomerization as a potential target for therapy
