Coronavirus

The Coronavirus Has One Strategy We Can’t Vaccinate Against

tomwt — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 21:17:54 +0000

The Coronavirus Has One Strategy We Can’t Vaccinate Against tomwt Mon, 08/22/2022 - 14:17 More CNAS in the Media Katherine J. Wu | The Atlantic August 04, 2022

THE ATLANTIC - These intercellular messages, ferried about by molecules called interferons, serve as a warning signal to nearby cells—“‘You are about to be infected; it’s time for you to set up an antiviral state,’” says Juliet Morrison, an immunologist at UC Riverside. Recipient cells start battening down the hatches, switching on hundreds of genes that help them pump out suites of defensive proteins. Strong, punchy interferon responses are essential to early viral control, acting as a “first line of defense” that comes online within minutes or hours, says Mario Santiago, an immunologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. At their best, interferons can contain the infection so quickly that the rest of the immune system hardly needs to get involved.

READ THE ARTICLE

Tags

Coronavirus

UC Riverside unveils on-campus coronavirus testing lab

edraws — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 17:15:27 +0000

UC Riverside unveils on-campus coronavirus testing lab edraws Tue, 08/17/2021 - 10:15 More Covid Testing Facility News David Downey | The Press-Enterprise October 12, 2020

UC Riverside is doing its own testing for the novel coronavirus.

The Inland Empire campus of about 25,000 students opened a COVID-19 testing laboratory in September and is processing 400 test samples per day, said Rodolfo Torres, vice chancellor for research and economic development.

“We’ve been operating at full speed,” Torres said.

And the university plans to boost the number of daily tests to 600 in the next few weeks, Torres said.

“We want to minimize the chance that there will be an outbreak,” he said.

In a densely populated campus environment, he said, that means testing over and over again — and getting results quickly — so infected people can be promptly quarantined before spreading the virus.

Assistant Professor Juliet Morrison runs a test on equipment in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. Researchers were getting the lab ready for testing students, staff and faculty. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Supplies are organized in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Equipment is prepared in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Matthew Collin, genomics core manager, sets up the COVID-19 testing laboratory on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, at UC Riverside. The lab is being used to rapidly test students, staff and faculty. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Matthew Collin, genomics core manager, tests equipment in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. Researchers were readying the lab for testing students, staff and faculty. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Assistant professor Juliet Morrison conducts a test run on equipment in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. Researchers were getting the lab ready for testing students, staff and faculty. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Isgouhi Kaloshian, professor and chair of the Department of Nematology, left, and Katherine A. Borkovich, professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology work in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Matthew Collin, genomics core manager, left, and assistant professor Juliet Morrison set up the COVID-19 testing laboratory Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in the Multidisciplinary Research Building at UC Riverside. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

Assistant Professor Rong Hai prepares equipment in UC Riverside’s COVID-19 testing laboratory on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in the university’s Multidisciplinary Research Building. Researchers were getting the lab ready for testing students, staff and faculty. (Photo courtesy of Stan Lim, UC Riverside)

“Today you can test negative and tomorrow you can test positive,” he said.

Speed also is crucial, he said, because infected young people are more likely than older people to not have symptoms.

UCR’s unveiling comes as some universities across the nation have struggled to prevent campus breaks.

Meanwhile, Riverside County has logged a total of 61,824 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,256 deaths since the outset of the pandemic.

In recent days, the number of new cases has been trending upward, threatening to send the county back into the state’s purple tier for restrictions and trigger closures of newly reopened businesses.

Torres noted that at various stages it has been difficult to get tested, there have been shortages of supplies and there have been delays in getting results. Those problems have underscored the need for an independent campus testing system, he said.

Just how fast results come back from UCR’s lab depends on when tests are taken.

If someone goes in for a COVID-19 test in the morning, Torres said, he or she will have results in 24 hours. If a person is tested in the evening, results will be available in 36 hours — 48 hours max, he said.

Right now, there aren’t many students going to classrooms on the fast-growing Riverside campus because of the pandemic and the restrictions that has triggered.

University spokesman John Warren said 97% of fall courses are being taught online.

But Warren said 874 students recently moved into UCR residence halls for the fall quarter, which began Sept. 28.

Torres said those students, because they live in close proximity, are being watched closely and tested twice weekly.

“We’ve gone through all those students twice already,” Torres said.

As of Tuesday, Oct. 6, four students had tested positive, he said.

UCR also planned to test students in nearby apartments, Torres said. Warren said about 1,000 students live there.

UCR athletes will be tested three times weekly, Torres said.

As for professors and other staff, Torres said the university will test them if they are in contact with students or at high risk. Warren said that will involve about 300 faculty members — roughly a third of the total.

“We don’t have the capacity to test them all,” Torres said.

Because of that, Torres said, many faculty members will be asked to get tested off campus.

Officials began talking about establishing a lab on campus in April, according to an internal university article. Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox appointed Torres and Dr. Deborah Deas, vice chancellor for health sciences and the Mark and Pam Rubin dean of the School of Medicine, to a group that explored the idea.

Deas said the lab results from months of hard work and collaboration among many people.

Juliet Morrison, an assistant professor and virologist in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, said in the article that testing is going to be crucial “if the campus is to eventually reopen for in-person teaching.”

UCR’s testing lab is in the Multidisciplinary Research Building.

The lab is essentially two small rooms with refrigerators, robots, and polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, machines where testing is done in many separate steps, Torres said.

“Barely two people can work in there,” he said.

At first, Torres said, UCR was going to administer the nasal test. But he said officials pivoted to the saliva testing method because it’s faster and less invasive.

“We changed the way we test, and we may change it again,” Torres said. “We will continue to adapt to the best technology that is available.”

While initial results have been encouraging, officials will have a better feel for how the fall quarter is going to go in a few weeks as students settle into dormitory life, Torres said.

Torres added that the university is counting on students.

“They are required to sign an agreement that they will behave in a certain way,” he said.

Students are asked, for example, to pledge they will stay home if they get the fever, chills or severe fatigue, or lose their sense of taste and smell, among other things.

The pledge also states: “I will wear a face covering at all times, both inside and outside, when on university property. For students living in on-campus housing, this does not apply while eating or drinking, showering, and brushing teeth or when alone in my room.”

“We cannot guarantee a safe place for everyone,” Torres said. “But we can make it as safe as we can by taking precautions.”

Read the original article here:

view article

Tags

Coronavirus

In-house coronavirus testing draws attention of SoCal media

ilseu — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 23:25:38 +0000

In-house coronavirus testing draws attention of SoCal media ilseu Thu, 10/15/2020 - 16:25 More College News Madeline Adamo | UCR News October 14, 2020

UC Riverside’s “homemade” COVID-19 testing lab has drawn widespread attention from Southern California media.

The acknowledgment of the new lab’s success comes at a time when some universities across the nation have struggled to prevent campus outbreaks. The lab – created by UCR faculty – places the university in the elite company of universities including Yale that are providing their own testing facilities.

“We’ve been operating at full speed,” Rodolfo Torres, vice chancellor for research and economic development, told The Press-Enterprise in an article published Monday.

“We want to minimize the chance that there will be an outbreak.”

Torres, who was appointed to plan the lab with other campus leaders in April, was also interviewed by NBC Los Angeles and Telemundo 52 about the success of the current program.

Using saliva tests, the lab can process up to 400 test samples a day, with students getting their results back quickly— usually within one to two days.

Of the 874 students who recently moved into UCR residence halls for the fall quarter, all are being tested twice weekly. Testing is expected to expand shortly to the 1,000 or so students living near campus in apartments.

Since the lab’s opening, five COVID-19 cases have been identified, allowing isolation measures to be enacted, as well as aggressive contact tracing.

“We cannot guarantee a safe place for everyone,” Torres said. “But we can make it as safe as we can by taking precautions.”

Full articles/segments here:

UC Riverside unveils on-campus coronavirus testing lab - The Press-Enterprise

UC Riverside creates on-campus testing lab, tests students twice per week - NBC Los Angeles

Ofrecen pruebas de COVID-19 a estudiantes en la Universidad de California Riverside - Telemundo 52

UC Riverside's on-campus coronavirus testing lab processing 400 samples a day - CBS Los Angeles

Tags

Coronavirus

Isgouhi Kaloshian

Katherine Borkovich

UC Riverside creates on-campus testing lab, tests students twice per week

ilseu — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 14:57:46 +0000

UC Riverside creates on-campus testing lab, tests students twice per week ilseu Wed, 10/14/2020 - 07:57 More CNAS in the Media KNBC-TV / TELEMUNDO October 13, 2020

KNBC-TV / TELEMUNDO -- KNBC speaks with members of the UCR campus community about the new COVID-19 testing lab on campus.

Watch the video on KNBC-TV:

Watch video in English

Watch the video on Telemundo:

Watch video in Spanish

Tags

Coronavirus

Coronavirus lab and testing in place for fall quarter

ilseu — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 20:28:39 +0000

Coronavirus lab and testing in place for fall quarter ilseu Wed, 09/23/2020 - 13:28 More College News Imran Ghori | UCR News September 22, 2020

As the fall quarter begins, UC Riverside has a new diagnostic lab operating on campus that will rapidly process samples from students and employees as part of an ongoing coronavirus testing program.

The lab, located at the Multidisciplinary Research Building, or MRB, tested its first sample in August and opened in early September.

The result of months of collaboration between several campus groups, the lab allows UCR to conduct its own independent testing of the campus community at a rate of about 600 samples a day. Results are processed within 24 hours.

“It’s one additional and important measure among all the others in place to mitigate the effects of the pandemic,” said Rodolfo Torres, vice chancellor for Research and Economic Development, whose office was involved in planning for the lab.

A team of researchers from the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences assembled the lab from scratch, borrowing some equipment from colleagues and creating their own testing kits.

Katherine Borkovich, a professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology; and Isgouhi Kaloshian, a professor and chair of the Department of Nematology, led those efforts and are overseeing the lab operations.

Having its own lab on campus will allow UCR to avoid testing kit shortages and longer wait times for results, which they said some health providers and public agencies have faced.

The lab has continued to refine its process in recent weeks, switching from nasal swabs to saliva tests. This change has allowed staff to boost testing speed and capacity, and they have the potential for an even bigger increase. While using nasal swabs, the lab could only process 200 samples a day, Borkovich said.

Student Health Services and UCR Health have begun using the lab for testing students and employees as part of an ongoing effort to keep the campus safe and healthy.

A drive-thru testing event held by UCR Health on Sept. 9 and 10 drew about 70 employees who made appointments in advance and provided saliva samples to medical assistants from their vehicles. The process took no more than 10 minutes.

Student Health Services, which had limited testing through an outside lab since March, is ramping up testing of students residing on campus with the opening of the new lab. It tested resident advisors earlier this month and began testing incoming students this week.

All students moving into campus housing are required to get tested before they can check in. Once they are living on campus, they will continue to be tested up to twice a week throughout the fall quarter.

Pop-up sample collection sites will be set up at or near the residence halls where students can check-in with a barcode on their smartphones.

For both employees and students, the campus has created an email notification process for those testing negative. Any positive results will be delivered by phone.

Read the original article here:

Tags

COVID-19 lab begins testing campus community

ilseu — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 20:53:16 +0000

COVID-19 lab begins testing campus community ilseu Wed, 09/16/2020 - 13:53 More College News Imran Ghori | Inside UCR September 16, 2020

UC Riverside has begun testing students, staff, and faculty members for the coronavirus with the opening of a new diagnostic lab on campus this month.

The lab, located at the Multidisciplinary Research Building, or MRB, began operations in early September. The facility allows the campus to conduct its own independent testing at a faster rate and greater capacity than if it were to use an outside service, said Katherine Borkovich, a professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, who helped lead efforts to create the lab.

UCR Health organized the first campus drive-thru testing for staff and faculty members on Sept. 9 and 10 with about 70 employees providing samples over the two days. A week earlier, the lab worked with Student Health Services to test 68 resident advisors who will be living on campus this fall.

Both are part of the initial steps to begin an expanded and regular testing program that will allow the campus to avoid competing with other institutions for scarce testing supplies and resources, said Dr. Donald Larsen, CEO of UCR Health.

“We wanted to be sure we had the testing resources our campus needed to successfully reopen in a safe manner,” Larsen said.

Medical assistants from UCR Health work at a COVID-19 drive-through sample collection outside the Student Recreation Center on Wednesday, September 9, 2020. (UCR/Stan Lim)

The drive-thru testing was held in the parking lot of the North Student Recreation Center with employees asked to make appointments in advance. Supervisors with employees working on campus were notified of the testing availability. Medical assistants at the entrance greeted each vehicle at the entrance, checked the names on the appointment list, and sent them to one of five canopy tents.

A different medical assistant then walked up to each vehicle, handing the employee a sheet of information on the test and a pipette to deposit a small sample of saliva. The pipette was placed in a sealed plastic bag and returned to the assistant who labeled it with the patient’s information.

The whole process was designed to take about 10 minutes to complete, said Dr. Andres Gonzalez, chief medical officer for UCR Health, who coordinated the sample collection efforts with Larsen.

Isgouhi Kaloshian, a professor and chair of the Department of Nematology who worked with Borkovich to create the lab, said they have continued to refine the testing process to increase efficiency.

Initially, lab staff used nasal swabs to collect samples but then switched to saliva tests. That has allowed them to increase their speed and testing capacity from 200 to 600 a day with the potential to increase it even more, Borkovich said. Both processes provide for results within 24 hours.

Saliva tests are also easier to administer, Gonzalez said, limiting contact with the patient in collecting a sample. He noted the medical assistants wore face shields, masks, and gloves but did not need full personal protective equipment for the drive-thru tests.

UCR Health will analyze the first results to refine the process as it expands testing opportunities in the future, Gonzalez said.

Zhaojie Meng, a staff member with Biomedical Sciences, is silhouetted as he collects his saliva for a COVID-19 test from his car on Wednesday, September 9, 2020.(UCR/Stan Lim)

“We definitely want everyone to have the option of being tested when they need to and we also want to test individuals on a regular frequency,” he said. “That way we can act on it on a timely basis.”

Student Health Services, under the direction of Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kenneth Han, has had ongoing limited testing at its clinic since March, but the recent testing of resident advisors at its clinic was the first time the campus lab was used, said William Rall, senior administrative director for the office.

“We’ve seen an immediate difference,” he said. “It’s about a fraction of the time.”

The process is less expensive and quicker, with results in 24 hours versus the weeklong wait with the outside lab, Rall said.

The office is putting together a plan for testing all students living on campus and those attending in-person classes. Those living in campus residence halls will be required to be tested before they move in and continue to be tested up to twice a week throughout the fall quarter.

Student Health Services plans to set up pop-up sample collection sites at or near the residence halls where students can check-in with a barcode on their smartphones, Rall said. Students will also be required to fill out a daily wellness check. Anyone experiencing symptoms will be asked not to come to the pop-up testing sites but will be tested separately.

For both employees and students, the campus has created a notification process to provide quick results, Larsen said. Those testing negative will be notified by email or text shortly after the results are available. Any positive results will be delivered via phone.

Larsen compared their goal to the process being used by athletics organizations such as the National Basketball Association where players are tested regularly and stay in a confined “bubble.”

“We need to sample very frequently our employees and our students as well as control the environment they’re living and working in,” he said.

COVID-19 drive-thru testing at UCR. (c) UCR/ Stan Lim

Read the original article and view more images here:

Tags

Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.

ilseu — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 23:59:45 +0000

Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. ilseu Mon, 08/31/2020 - 16:59 More CNAS in the Media Apoorva Mandavilli | The New York Times August 29, 2020

THE NEW YORK TIMES - Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.

Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive,” she said.

READ THE ARTICLE

Tags

Juliet Morrison

Coronavirus

Campus COVID-19 testing lab to open

ilseu — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 23:21:15 +0000

Campus COVID-19 testing lab to open ilseu Mon, 08/24/2020 - 16:21 More College News Imran Ghori | Inside UCR August 21, 2020

UC Riverside is opening a diagnostic lab that will allow for expanded and rapid testing of students, staff, and faculty members for the coronavirus.

The COVID-19 testing lab, located at the Multidisciplinary Research Building, or MRB, successfully tested its first sample on Aug. 12 and is expected to open in September.

The lab will allow the campus to conduct its own independent testing of the campus community at a rate of about 200 samples a day with results available within 24 hours, said Katherine Borkovich, a professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology.

Professors Isgouhi Kaloshian, left, and Katherine Borkovich led the effort to create a testing lab at the Multidisciplinary Research Building that will allow for rapid testing for the coronavirus. (UCR/Stan Lim)

Borkovich and Isgouhi Kaloshian, a professor and chair of the Department of Nematology, led the efforts to create the lab after they were approached in May by Kathryn Uhrich, dean of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, or CNAS.

The lab will start on a small scale when it opens next month before ramping up in the following weeks. It is expected to test all students in campus housing by the start of the fall quarter.

The campus began discussing creating its own lab in April with Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox appointing Rodolfo Torres, vice chancellor for Research and Economic Development, and Dr. Deborah Deas, vice chancellor for health sciences and the Mark and Pam Rubin dean of the School of Medicine, to a group tasked with exploring that question.

“It’s one additional and important measure among all the others in place to mitigate the effects of the pandemic,” Torres said.

Staff and faculty members who interact with students and employees working on campus full-time will also be tested, he said. Eventually, the goal is to test all students, staff, and faculty members on campus at least once a month. The lab is also exploring increasing the frequency of testing.

Samples will be collected by health professionals from Student Health and UCR Health at designated locations on campus and delivered to the lab for analysis. UCR Health has already piloted a drive-through location where samples can be collected in 15-minute appointments.

Borkovich said studies show that regular testing can significantly reduce the risk of an outbreak.

Deas described the effort as the result of months of hard work and collaboration that will provide the campus with greater availability of testing and rapid turnaround of results.

“This will help us to provide a safer environment for our community for teaching, learning, and working, and will help us partner more effectively with Riverside County to control and prevent future outbreaks,” she said.

Student Health Services has had limited testing at its clinic since March but only for students showing symptoms or exposed to those who tested positive. The clinic used test kits from Quest Diagnostics, sending the samples off-site to a company lab for processing.

In recent weeks, health providers and public agencies in California and nationally have reported a shortage of COVID-19 testing kits and longer wait times for results, as much as two weeks.

UCR should not experience those issues with the new lab as the team is building its own kits and is conducting all testing on-site, Kaloshian said.

“They realize it’s essential there is a lab like ours on campus,” Kaloshian said of campus leadership.

She and Borkovich began the steps of putting together the lab in May, first adding three other members to their team, all from CNAS.

Rong Hai and Juliet Morrison are both assistant professors and virologists in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology and are experts in human RNA viruses. Matthew Collin, manager of the Institute for Integrative Genomic Biology Genomics Core and project scientist for the Dynamic Genome, rounded out the group with his expertise in instrumentation.

Matthew Collin, Genomics Core Manager, left, and Assistant Professor Juliet Morrison work together setting up the COVID-19 testing lab on Monday, August 10, 2020, at the Multidisciplinary Research Building. UCR/Stan Lim)

Kaloshian and Borkovich were appointed to a University of California-wide taskforce on testing and tracing with the goal of implementing testing on all UC campuses.

They learned from the other campuses, especially Santa Cruz and Berkeley, which like Riverside don’t have medical centers with existing clinical laboratory infrastructure.

Berkeley created a blueprint for a lab that is an extension of a clinical laboratory at a student health center. Hai is well-acquainted with the Berkeley researchers and consulted with them throughout the process. “That was absolutely a major help for us,” Borkovich said.

The five-member team reached out to colleagues to borrow equipment such as refrigerators, robots, and polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, machines. The process saved the campus money and the time it may have taken to obtain items that were in high-demand, Borkovich said.

All the equipment they needed was already in use in campus labs and researchers were happy to loan items, sometimes trading machinery in what Kaloshian described as “a bit of horse-trading.”

Almost all the equipment except robotic machinery was donated by CNAS faculty members or the RED incubator facility. Supplies such as tubes, swabs, plastic ware, solutions, and other chemicals were purchased to build the kits and conduct the tests.

Torres worked with Rosibel Ochoa, associate vice chancellor for Technology Partnerships, and others in RED and MRB to make incubator space on the first floor of the building available to house the lab. The building is already certified to meet biosafety level 2 requirements, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires for COVID-19 testing.

The team members loaded and hauled much of the equipment themselves, assisted by staff members from RED and the MRB when they moved in.

The team worked closely with Student Health Services to meet all local, state, and federal regulatory requirements for the testing lab.

Assistant Professor Rong Hai prepares equipment in the COVID-19 testing lab on Monday, August 10, 2020, at the Multidisciplinary Research Building. (UCR/Stan Lim)

Clinical testing of patient samples requires certification from the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, or CLIA, program. Student Health Services already has CLIA certification for its clinic and the new lab will operate under that license. The School of Medicine and UCR Health leadership have also been coordinating with Riverside County officials about COVID-19 testing and reporting requirements.

The lab consists of two small rooms where testing is done in multiple steps. The samples are transferred from tubes into small racks under biosafety hoods using robotic arms. Each rack has 96 wells with the capacity to test samples, each less than a drop size at 10 microliters.

Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which carries the genetic information of RNA viruses, is extracted from each sample and put though one of the PCR machines, which basically amplifies the signal of the virus and makes it easier to detect.

The procedure uses a kit approved by the FDA and adapted from other UC schools, Hai said.

“This will ensure the best biosafety practice and provide the highest sensitivity/specificity for detecting the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in positive samples,” Hai said.

The data is logged into a computer database using a bar code scan system created by Information Technology Solutions that will track the sample throughout the process.

All personnel working in the lab must wear full personal protective equipment such as N95 masks, face shields, gloves, and gowns.

Morrison said additional robots are being purchased that will double the lab’s capacity.

"Testing and case investigation are absolutely necessary if the campus is to eventually reopen for in-person teaching,” she said.

Initially, Borkovich, Kaloshian and the rest of their team will work in the lab but they recently hired two lab technicians who will take over under their supervision.

Torres praised the faculty members who set up the lab, noting they took on the task in addition to their regular duties. He said the whole effort was possible by several groups coming together including CNAS, RED, Student Health Services, the School of Medicine, UCR Health, ITS, and Environmental Health and Safety.

“They say it takes a village,” Torres said. “It took a village. It shows a lot about what the university is about.”

Tags

Inside UCR

Coronavirus

Cell biologist to study coronavirus-related infection of respiratory cells

ilseu — Tue, 19 May 2020 21:22:14 +0000

Cell biologist to study coronavirus-related infection of respiratory cells ilseu Tue, 05/19/2020 - 14:22 More College News IQBAL PITTALWALA | Inside UCR May 19, 2020

Prue Talbot, a professor of cell biology at UC Riverside, has received a seed grant to study the COVID-19-related infection of respiratory cells.

Prue Talbot

She and her team will use the funds to test the hypothesis that electronic cigarettes and nicotine increase the ACE2 receptor on respiratory epithelium, providing more binding sites for the virus and increasing the possibility of infection.

“We expect our work will help clarify if the use of tobacco products makes it more likely for an infection to occur,” Talbot said.

Angiotensin converting enzyme-2, or ACE2, is a special receptor on some cells that has attracted the attention of drug companies as a potential target for addressing the novel coronavirus.

The $25,000, six-month grant from the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California will support the research of three graduate students.

Read the article online:

Tags

Gilead poised to upend market with its first Covid-19 study data

ilseu — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:00:43 +0000

Gilead poised to upend market with its first Covid-19 study data ilseu Tue, 04/28/2020 - 08:00 More CNAS in the Media Cristin Flanagan | Bloomberg April 24, 2020

BLOOMBERG - Gilead Sciences Inc., whose Covid-19 treatment has whipsawed markets amid conflicting early reports about its efficacy, is set to report the first results from a company-sponsored study of the experimental drug.

Data from the first 400 severely ill coronavirus patients being treated with Remdesivir in an open-label study are expected before the end of next week. While not expected to provide a definitive answer on efficacy, the report is likely to again trigger wide swings in Gilead’s shares and the broader market. Options prices show investors expect a more than 9% move in the drugmaker’s stock price over the next week.

University of California, Riverside virologist Juliet Morrison expressed a similar sentiment. “We still don’t have the raw data, but it doesn’t seem impressive to me,” she said in a phone interview after the China data reports. For diseases like Covid-19 driven by a patient’s own immune system, “antivirals are unlikely to work. And they won’t be helpful at the severe stages of the disease when the virus is not the driving factor,” she said.

READ THE article

Tags

Coronavirus

Juliet Morrison