News Archives: April, 2020

Charles Darwin popularized the concept of survival of the fittest as a mechanism underlying the natural selection that drives the evolution of life. Organisms with genes better suited to the environment are selected for survival and pass them to the next generation.

The National Institutes of Health today announced a new initiative aimed at speeding innovation, development and commercialization of COVID-19 testing technologies, a pivotal component needed to return to normal during this unprecedented global pandemic. With a $1.5 billion investment from federal stimulus funding, the newly launched Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative will infuse funding into early innovative technologies to speed development of rapid and widely accessible COVID-19 testing. At the same time, NIH will seek opportunities to move more advanced diagnostic technologies swiftly through the development pipeline toward commercialization and broad availability. NIH will work closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to advance these goals.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Manufacturing Institute announced approximately $4 million for five projects that align with RAPID’s research focus areas in chemical and commodity processing, natural gas upgrading, renewable bioproducts, intensified process fundamentals, modeling and simulation, and module manufacturing.

One of the keys to safely ending COVID-19 lockdowns across the country is contact tracing — identifying people who have been exposed to the virus to prevent them from spreading it. A Brown University computer scientist is part of an international research team trying to enable contact tracking with smartphones in a way that preserves everyone’s privacy.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), in collaboration with the Duke Clinical Research Institute, has received a $1 million federal grant for two clinical trials involving infants with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS).

N95 respirators can be decontaminated effectively and maintain functional integrity for up to three uses, according to National Institutes of Health scientists. N95 respirators are designed for single-use and are worn by healthcare providers to reduce exposure to airborne infectious agents, including the virus that causes COVID-19. The study was conducted in a controlled laboratory setting, and the results were posted on a preprint server on today(link is external). The findings are not yet peer-reviewed but are being shared to assist the public health response to COVID-19.

On April 13 Louisiana State University began large-scale production of personal protective equipment, or PPE, in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, or PMAC, as part of its statewide response to support medical professionals on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The PMAC PPE production effort unifies LSU’s innovation, research, expertise, assets and facilities into a single purpose-driven initiative: Protecting Louisiana’s doctors and nurses through bold and creative efforts to fill shortages in critical equipment, specifically gowns and face shields.

The West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute announced a new study published in partnership with Weill Cornell Medical Center that demonstrates the successful opening of the blood brain barrier in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex using focused ultrasound to treat six patients with early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

The Healthy Nevada Project, a first-of-its-kind, community-based population health study combining genetic, clinical, environmental and social data, offers free genetic testing to every Nevadan interested in learning more about their health and genetic profile. With more than 50,000 study participants enrolled in just three years, the Healthy Nevada Project has become the fastest-enrolling genetic study in the world. Now, the team is demonstrating that they can quickly assess how thousands of people across Nevada are experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Jerome Baudry is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Dr. Baudry and his lab are involved in a project that is using the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer to examine compounds to fight the virus that has already killed 34,807 people as of early Monday morning. The compounds under review include drugs already available with safe profiles, as well as natural products. Compounds identified as possible future drugs will also be studied.