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Botnar Research Center advancing research into coronavirus

30.03.2020

The Basel-based Botnar Research Center for Child Health is providing capital in the amount of 15 million Swiss francs to its four partner institutions. In this way, the University of Basel should be in a position to advance research into dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.

3D rendering of a microscopic image of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (img: Creativeneko/123rf)

The Botnar Research Center for Child Health (BRCCH) was founded by the University of Basel and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). The University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), which is likewise based in Basel, are also involved with the center. BRCCH is now providing its four partner institutions with 15 million Swiss francs to facilitate research into the coronavirus, as detailed in a press release issued by the University of Basel.

The funding is to be provided by the Foundation Botnar as part of a first emergency initiative organized by the BRCCH, which was opened in 2019. Within the framework of this initiative, projects “dealing with the diagnosis and human immune response to COVID-19, as well as to projects in the fields of medical interventions and disease management” are to be supported over the next two-and-a-half years.

The BRCCH initiative will focus on two objectives: first, to come up with solutions to urgent problems in the fight against the pandemic and, second, to develop long-term approaches “so that similar situations can be better managed worldwide in the future”.