(Fighting New Coronary Pneumonia) How do scientists find new "nuclear" methods to fight the "epidemic"?
China News Agency, Beijing, March 6th: How do scientists find a new "nuclear" method for fighting the "epidemic"?
China News Agency reporter Du Yan
"Basic research and scientific research need to be adhered to for a long time, so that you can come up with a solution quickly when you encounter an emergency." You Zheng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and vice president of Tsinghua University, said in an interview that since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia He felt particularly deeply about it.
There are countless viruses and they persist. Today, human science and technology have developed rapidly, but people's understanding of viruses is still limited.
Mankind's most powerful weapon against disease is science and technology. The latest batch of scientific research results can be applied to the "epidemic" in the short term, mostly based on more than ten years of unremitting research efforts.
Professor Tuan Wang and his team at Tsinghua University have worked hard for low-cost, infrared focal plane chip-based thermal imaging camera technology for ten years. "The project was solved with the question of existence and absence." He pointed out that what he is thinking about today is how to innovate through technology. Reduce costs and push this large-scale, non-contact temperature measurement technology to a wide range of applications.
Wang Xinquan's group of Tsinghua University's High-Tech Innovation Center for Structural Biology and Zhang Linqi's group of medical schools have collaborated in the areas of molecular mechanisms of new and recurrent virus infections, screening and identification of neutralizing antibodies, and vaccine development. Accurately mapping the interaction site between the new crown virus RBD and the receptor ACE2 will greatly help drug development and vaccine design.
"On the one hand, it is interest, and on the other hand, I personally think that coronavirus has always been possible to cause many health threats to humans." Wang Xinquan has studied coronavirus for 8 years. He said that the more knowledge and technology are accumulated, the more the new virus will be dealt with. The stronger your preparation will be, you will not be caught off guard.
To avoid being caught off guard, Professor Zhang Linqi of Tsinghua University believes that to "actively attack and actively respond": first of all, we must improve awareness of prevention and control and risk, secondly we must improve the corresponding mechanism and funding support, and once again ensure that talents follow up.
As a first-rate university in China, Tsinghua University has many advantages in terms of talents and disciplines. You Zheng, the vice-principal, pointed out that in order to avoid being caught off guard by new problems and solve the "stuck neck" problem of scientific and technological problems, it is necessary to establish a "1 + N" system, that is, to conduct basic research by one person, with some support behind it. "You can't let the research results stay at the writing stage, but you must 'write on the ground' to really land."
He said that in response to the epidemic, the school has established a scientific and technological tackling team and set up a special fund. It is planned to invest 150 million yuan (RMB, the same below) in the next three years. This year, it will invest 50 million yuan to promote new crown pneumonia. The ability to prevent and control scientific research has also helped China improve its response to major public health emergencies.
To meet the sudden challenge of the epidemic, decisive and timely measures are needed, and technology is needed.
You Zheng said that recently, in accordance with national strategic needs, long-term layout of related discipline structure and scientific research is being carried out. On the one hand, create a good innovation ecology for basic scientific research, so that scientists, especially young people, can do research with peace of mind. "Don't worry about funding, don't worry about treatment, don't worry about resources." On the other hand, aim at the national strategic core technology and international The scientific and technological frontier issues organize the team to carry out long-term research.
Beijing, home to hundreds of research institutes, has accelerated the construction of national science and technology innovation centers in the past six years, and proposes that it will initially become a science and technology innovation center with global influence in 2020.
Among them, the competent education department actively took action. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission constructed 13 Beijing laboratories in universities in Beijing in 2012, covering new high-tech industries such as next-generation information technology, biomedical equipment, and biomedical materials. For more than seven years, the laboratory has undertaken more than 2,200 various scientific research projects, with a total scientific research funding of 2.5 billion yuan. Since 2015, 22 high-tech innovation centers in Beijing universities have been built. Each year, 50 million yuan (humanities and social sciences) or 100 million yuan (technical sciences) are allocated to each center.
In order to "master more core technologies with independent intellectual property rights and come up with more hard-core products", Wang Xinquan believes that it is very important for scientific researchers to "sit on the cold bench" and stick to a certain area of research. He said that the team's next focus is to screen for antibodies or small molecule drugs that can prevent the binding of the new coronavirus to the receptor. This is a relatively long process and requires the continuous efforts of more scientists. (Finish)