“Science, and only science, will get us through this”, says researcher José Manuel Martínez Costas about the global coronavirus pandemic. At Santander, we want to help. Through our Supera COVID-19 fund, we’re financing one of the ten vaccination projects underway in Spain, led by Martínez Costas.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Santander has mobilized resources to support in any way we can. The Supera COVID-19 fund, launched by Santander Universities, aims to finance projects run by Spanish universities and the Spanish National Research Council to study prevention of the virus, the social impact of the pandemic and the digital divide. One of those projects is a new vaccine by José Manuel Martínez Costas and his team at the University of Santiago de Compostela’s CIQUS research centre in Spain. 

According to Martínez Costas, they’ve been making great strides with an innovative intranasal vaccine : “The cells load these spheres with any protein we like. In this case, we loaded them with SARS-Cov2 proteins. The spheres are purified easily and, as the cell carries out the protein-sphere coupling itself, the vaccines are produced quickly and cheaply.”

The preliminary results have been positive, and a pre-clinical trial will reveal the immune system response.

Our support during the pandemic

Our purpose as a responsible bank is to contribute to society, especially in these times. Martínez Costas stresses the importance of support from an institution like Santander, believing that, at present, “what we lack in science is means, not imagination”. Thanks to the backing received, his work to find solutions to end the pandemic can make headway. 

The Supera COVID-19 fund is one of the tools that Santander has made available since the beginning of the pandemic. We continue to lend a hand in a difficult situation, where moving forward together is paramount.