The federal government has provided researchers at the University of British Columbia with a total of $5.1 million in funding towards research on detecting, managing, and reducing the transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
UBC researchers were initially provided with $2.8 million on March 6, but that has since been topped off with an additional $2.3 million, as of this week. The funding will be split amongst research teams led by Dr. Richard Lester, Dr. Srinivas Murthy, Natalie Prystajecky and Dr. Mel Krajden, Yue Qian, Horacio Bach, Artem Cherkasov, Eric Jan, Jeffrey Joy, and Dr. James Russell.
“We are very grateful for this additional investment through the federal government’s emergency research funding,” said Gail Murphy, UBC vice-president of research and innovation, in a statement.
“This provides researchers at UBC and across the country with resources to gain critical insights into COVID-19 and help to develop treatments and prevent its spread.”
This includes $999,000 using artificial intelligence to perform “deep docking” research that identifies the compounds that could potentially inhibit the main enzyme that allows SARS-CoV-2 virus – the scientific name of the COVID-19 virus – to survive.