We’re using our 3D medical animation skills to help in the Global Battle vs Novel Coronavirus

Girish Khera

3D medical animation full explainer video of Coronavirus

In a world replete with fake news and dubious sourcing, it is not enough to state the truth – you must market the truth.

The globe is grappling with the next pandemic, one that has already surpassed the combined infection of both SARS and MERS. The CDC, WHO, NHC and numerous governments, academic institutions and private firms are racing against this threat, and with unprecedented levels of cooperation, to limit transmission, understand the biology and find a treatment or vaccine.

At Scientific Animations, we have dedicated 25% of our capability to find leading voices disseminating important information and help get the word out by way of our powerful visualization.

Here is what we are doing and how you can help:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Structure

Coronavirus Explainer and Mechanism of Action (MoA) Animated Video

We have been making a series of (almost daily) videos to help explain the biology and MoA (as the world discovers it) of COVID-19 as well as explain pandemics and things we can all do to protect ourselves.

Key takeaways we have learned:

This in MoA is closer to SARS than MERS with similar characteristics of both transmission and mortality
The ACE2 receptor is most likely implicated for cell entry
Treatments using HIV drugs may be helping; treatment with experimental Remdesivir is hopeful
Lightning-fast coordination has allowed the world to sequence, determine the structure and part of the MoA of the virus, allowing for quick prototyping of potential vaccine/treatment candidates

For more details refer to the above video

Offering visualization services

We have offered supporting visualizations for any requirement related to COVID-19 to the likes of the CDC, Newspapers, Harvard Health, even Corporates like Gilead Sciences. One such effort resulted in creating the first cross-sectional image of COVID-19 based on electron microscope data. It is the header image on this page and is free (right-click on it) to download and use under Wikimedia Creative Commons 4.0 license.

Our Coronavirus command centre ( http://coronavirus.scientificanimations.com/ )

A place where we 1) track the spread, 2) explain the emerging biology, and 3) remind ourselves of the basic hygiene that helps stop infectious diseases. We have created a subdomain where we curate articles that we feel are up to date and reliable and help to do one of the three objectives mentioned above.

Here’s the doc we created for protecting against infectious disease. Again it’s free to download and use.

Healthy Habits for Coronavirus Prevention (to view on mobile click here)

How you can help

We have the following three asks: For any, you can get in touch with contact@scientificanimations.com :

Do you know Institutions/governments/corporations on the front lines that have content that they need packaged for dissemination?
Are you aware of path forging biology or prevention tools and methods that could be helpful for the world to know? Please share. We will visualize it and put it out.
Do you know professionals who can medically review (in semi real-time) the work we are doing? Please put us in touch.

All of the above is pro bono and we are managing lightning turn around times.

THE 48 HOURS THAT MAY HAVE SAVED THOUSANDS OF LIVES

or why communication matters.

**Coronavirus** **3D ribbon model image**

Image credits: Christian C. Gruber Georg Steinkellner (Innophore image)

Jan 23: Scientific Animations notices that the WIKIpedia page for Coronavirus had no visualization of a structure. We quickly researched, prepared and uploaded an image of a Coronavirus structure on both the Coronavirus page and the Novel Coronavirus page.

Jan 24: Wikipedia accepts our structure for the Coronavirus page, but kicks it off the Novel Coronavirus page arguing that the structure is not yet known. Meanwhile, another small German enzyme research company, Innophore, corrects the page by uploading a real 3D ribbon model image that their platform has produced based on the genome sequence that Chinese researchers had published 12 days earlier.

Jan 25: Innophore is contacted by China to help determine which antiviral might work best on the structure because they saw the Wikipedia image. Their analysis reveals Lopinavir as a top-three candidate for treatment.

We now know from studies in China that Lopinavir and its combination Rotavir are part of the treatment regimen adopted by China to treat the virus. Thai doctors who have had 25 cases and no deaths to date also indicated that the combination with oseltamivir.