This is the kind of thing Trump has stopped funding for. Luckily for us, other countries are still doing medical research. And this is a very promising way to defeat Corona viruses.
--Kim
Six years after COVID-19 reshaped the world, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute in London have completed something that would have seemed impossible in 2020 — a comprehensive structural and functional map of every protein encoded by the coronavirus family, identifying the conserved vulnerability sites shared across all known variants and related bat coronaviruses likely to cause future spillovers. This isn't just about SARS-CoV-2. It's a blueprint for defeating the entire coronavirus family before the next pandemic begins. 
The project used cryo-electron microscopy and AlphaFold2 structural predictions to resolve the three-dimensional architecture of 29 coronavirus proteins across 15 distinct coronavirus species. By overlaying these structures and identifying regions that remain geometrically identical across all variants — conserved because mutations there destroy essential viral function — the team pinpointed seven "Achilles heel" sites that represent pan-coronavirus therapeutic targets. A drug or antibody targeting any of these sites would theoretically work against any coronavirus, past or future, regardless of how much the spike protein mutates.
For pandemic preparedness in 2026, this map is being used to accelerate broad-spectrum antiviral development through two parallel tracks. The first involves small molecule inhibitors targeting the most conserved viral protease sites. The second involves designing "pan-coronavirus antibodies" that bind the identified structural invariant regions — antibodies that wouldn't need updating with each new variant the way current vaccines do. 
The lesson COVID-19 taught the world at catastrophic cost was that reactive pandemic response is too slow. The Crick Institute's protein vulnerability atlas represents exactly the kind of proactive science that could prevent the next coronavirus from reaching pandemic scale.
Source: Francis Crick Institute, Nature, 2025 #Coronavirus #PandemicPreparedness #AntiviralDrug #PanCoronavirus #ViralStructure #FuturePandemic
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