BU Scientists Awarded $1.9 Million to Accelerate Coronavirus Research

Since the novel and fast-spreading SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus first upended life in the United States and around the world, scientists at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) have dropped nearly every other research project to focus on understanding and combating the virus. Now, BU scientists have received nearly $1.9 million in new funding from the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) to further advance coronavirus research—much of that work made possible by the NEIDL’s ability to safely house and work with live copies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

All told, on May 13 MassCPR announced it has awarded $16.5 million to 62 coronavirus research projects, many of those funds going to research teams in Greater Boston. Much of the funded work will be done in collaboration with scientists at the NEIDL, one of only a handful of facilities in Massachusetts currently capable of working with live, patient-derived samples of the coronavirus. MassCPR—which first convened on March 2, 2020—is buoyed by $115 million in funding, spread over the next five years, from Evergrande Group, a Fortune Global 500 company in China. Participating research collaborators include scientists and clinicians from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, BU, Tufts University, University of Massachusetts, and local biomedical research institutes, biotech companies, and academic medical centers.

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