Policy options and practical recommendations for determining priorities in public health research agendas in peripheral countries: insights from a collaborative work initiative in Argentina during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic produced by the newly emerged coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 changed public health agendas and scientific priorities (1). During most of 2020, no vaccines or therapies were available to fight the acute respiratory disease produced by this new type of coronavirus (2). This uncertain situation led scientists to increase interdisciplinary collaborations in order to contribute to the understanding of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Therefore, several new biotechnological initiatives were carried out in extraordinary time to generate tools that could help in prevention, diagnosis and therapeutics (3). The majority of them were developed in central countries and resulted in several approaches that were distributed worldwide. However, peripheral countries, like Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and India, have also made their own developments providing resources to local production necessary to fight against this respiratory disease (4, 5).1,2 One of these initiatives was the Argentinean AntiCovid Consortium, where we partnered with nearly 30 researchers (PIs, young researchers, postdocs and PhD students) from different scientific backgrounds, combining our knowledge and expertise to carry out a multidisciplinary strategy.3 The main objective of this Consortium was to rapidly generate scalable and economically accessible biotechnological tools. In particular, we focused on the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, which was employed for local development of in vitro diagnostic kits and later as an antigen for vaccine development. One characteristic of the consortium was to work as horizontally as possible (each one according to his/her possibilities during the pandemic), without establishing hierarchies among members beyond those given by experience and knowledge. In line with this vision, some of the biotechnological outcomes of the consortium were published in open access peer-reviewed journals, listing the authors in alphabetical order along with an equal contribution statement (6, 7), to make the developments available to the scientific community and the society in general. In this article we will comment on the positive outcomes of this initiative, some of the drawbacks we encountered, as well as open questions and perspectives on the role of science in peripheral countries.