In early 2020, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute in London, Europe’s largest biomedical research facility, suddenly found themselves facing what may prove to be the toughest challenge of their careers in the shape of a largely unknown new coronavirus – likely linked to bats – that made the leap to humans somewhere in China late in 2019.
The Sars-CoV-2 pathogen, and Covid-19, which is strictly speaking the infection it causes, required an urgent and concerted cross-disciplinary research effort, and the Crick – as it has become known – stepped up, leading on the development of new testing methods and seeking answers to questions such as why some cases of Covid-19 are so much worse than others, how the virus interacts with human cells, how it spreads through human populations, and how it affects people who have pre-existing conditions.
