Announcing the COVID-19 Research Collaborative

June 01, 2020

Wellspring is pleased to announce the public availability of a free community website devoted to pooling worldwide research and technology efforts in the fight against SARS-CoV-2, also known as the novel coronavirus or COVID-19.

Initiated by the research community, we’ve brought together technologies, startups, and researcher profiles into one centralized location. The diversity of activities highlights the myriad ways in which science and technology are aiding the worldwide effort to respond, recover, and re-emerge from the pandemic. For example:

  • Immunological research that may help accelerate therapies and/or vaccines (for example, a class of small molecule inhibitors of COVID-19 which may be useful in antiviral therapeutics)
  • PPE gear designed specifically for low cost and/or rapidly scalable production (for example, printable face masks designed for use in treating COVID-19 patients)
  • Emerging epidemiological knowledge about how the pandemic will affect various segments of society (for example, this ongoing study into the effects of COVID-19 on inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease)
  • Infectious disease modeling and other sources and applications of data and information about the spread of the virus (for example, this site with a real-time model of coronavirus cases)
  • Diagnostic tests to detect the presence of the virus in essential workers, monitor the status of positive patients, and prevent asymptomatic transmission in the workplace (for example, this point-of-care test that uses nasal swabs and saliva specimens)

The push to consolidate and share came from our community. Research institutions didn’t have a common, scalable mechanism for collecting and sharing their labs’ work around the world. Even urgent COVID-related collaborations were happening behind-the-scenes, based on existing personal relationships and professional networks. Yet given the critical need for speed, efficiency, and innovation, they recognized the potential to connect researchers and minimize duplicative efforts on a much broader scale.

Wellspring already owns and maintains Flintbox, the world’s largest marketplace for licensing scientific discoveries and new-to-the-world technologies. We quickly spun up a new site as a dedicated location for worldwide COVID-19 collaboration, leveraging our primary strengths as the best way to pitch in.

We have also made it possible for individual institutions to highlight their own collections of COVID-19 resources for the world to peruse. For one example, check out the University of Michigan’s COVID-19 portal. If you’re a research institution that would like to add your assets and expertise to the mix, please fill out this spreadsheet template and send it to support@flintbox.com. If you’re part of the global response, we welcome your suggestions, in the comments below, on how we can make this site as helpful as possible in surfacing needed resources and filling crucial technology gaps.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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