Comprehensive Tool Development for the National Covid-19 Effort

In order to accelerate and facilitate the National efforts in the fight against Covid-19, we are generating an extensive portfolio of Covid related reagents. These cover all components of the Covid-19 virus and some key components of SARs and MERs, including >100 DNA clones, >50 proteins and 42 antibodies. We are making these reagents available globally in the fight against Covid via a new website we have created. https://mrcppu-covid.bio/. The antibodies have been generated in collaboration with CVR, Glasgow and are ovine based polyclonal. These are being fully quality assessed for their utility in immunoprecipitation, western blot and imaging applications. Antigens and being developed with multiple tags and with all relevant variants and DNA clones to cover multiple expression systems and applications. To our knowledge, we are the first to have achieved this complete catalogue of Covid-19 reagents. This project was undertaken within our MRC PPU Reagents and Services Division, which is normally supported only by the income it generates from the cost recovery systems we have put in place. We are also using these tools in our Units research efforts, including screening for modulators of viral proteases and helicases, developing lateral flow and array diagnostic tests, studying the ligases involved in pathogenesis and looking at the interactions of Furan protease and its role in infection. It is crucial for the continued survival of our MRC PPU Reagents and Services operations that we receive some funding contribution for the efforts we are undertaking. We proceeded in the development of the Covid-19 toolbox before securing funding because it was equally crucial to not delay with this project that promises to accelerate the National Covid-19 effort.