Covid-19 in focus as Chandigarh Science Congress begins

CHASCON-2020 is being organised by PU in association with the Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster

The 14th edition of the Chandigarh Science Congress (CHASCON-2020) virtually commenced on Thursday at Panjab University with a session on Covid-19 and vaccine development.

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CHASCON-2020 is being organised by PU in association with the Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC). Around 400 students joined the conference virtually.

Director of the National Institute of Immunology (NII), professor Amulya K Panda, talked about the challenges in the development of a vaccine and illustrated the major hurdles in its development.

Professor R Vardarajan of the molecular biophysics unit, IISC, Bangalore, said the vaccines didn’t elicit a memory response, which could be a hurdle in providing immunity.

Professor MRN Murthy of the AstraZeneca chair, Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bangalore, gave a talk on the structural biology of coronaviruses and how SARS-Cov-2 was evolving at a drastic fast rate and the transmission rate was relatively faster than other viruses.