Until now, more than 27 million cases of COVID-19 have been registered worldwide resulting in more than 850 000 deaths. No effective treatment is presently available and there is an intense race to develop drugs as well as vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 50 companies and 20 institutions are currently participating in the efforts with some of the around 120 potential vaccines already advanced in phase III of clinical trials.
The development of efficient drugs and vaccines requires a deep understanding of the biological targets and knowledge of the three-dimensional shape of the targeted proteins. Structural biology, within the first days of the pandemic, responded quickly to the new challenges imposed by the coronavirus threat to human health worldwide and provided key information immediately available to the scientific community to help in the fight against COVID-19.