News Archives: July, 2020

UNH has launched six interdisciplinary research projects that address public health and welfare challenges related to COVID-19. The pilot projects, supported by the Office of Research, Economic Engagement and Outreach and Office of the Provost as part of the Collaborative Research Excellence (CoRE) initiative, harness expertise from across the university in fields as diverse as microbiology, digital literacy, environmental engineering and public health.

Scientists in Idaho and Washington have joined forces to develop a model to assist in identifying effective mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on Idahoans. To help Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s Coronavirus Working Group make data-driven policy decisions, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) and five universities were asked to develop a model to assist in identifying effective COVID-19 mitigation strategies. The strategies would help by minimizing the number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in Idaho. The model could also be used to get a rough estimate of resource needs such as ICU beds, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE).

SAB Biotherapeutics, a company based at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is harnessing that potential to fight Covid-19. They've done similar work before, creating polyclonal antibodies to treat both influenza and MERS. Polyclonal antibodies are a collection of antibodies a body makes to ward off a specific invading organism. Today the focus is on treating, or even preventing, Covid-19.

The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 in Native communities around the United States is the result of historical and current systemic racism that has siloed Tribes and prevented them from using their resources effectively, experts say. One place where this manifests is in food security.

Some states are allowing restaurants to move back to indoor dining. But is it a safe idea to dine in right now?

Patrick Perry is research coordinator for the University of Kentucky’s Tobacco Research and Development Center, which operates Spindletop — a sprawling 2,200 acre farm on the city’s outskirts. Using Artemisia annua plants, also known as sweet wormwood, that Perry and his team harvested last year, UK is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials to see if purified plant compounds and its leaves — dried and steeped in either tea or coffee — can treat someone with underlying health issues who contracts the virus.

Stocked & Reddie, the food pantry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), has been helping university students and employees gain access to healthy food for about a year. But its membership—and operating practices—went through some big changes when the coronavirus crisis hit this spring.

When stay-at-home orders to reduce the spread of COVID-19 are eventually lifted, most restaurants can reopen their doors. Yet when it's back to business as usual, chances are that some of that food will be thrown out. A partnership among University of Kansas researchers, students, local restaurants and community agencies is still working to reduce food waste and food insecurity and will be ready once restaurant business returns.

“Chicago will be ours!” This is the last line of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which captured the horrific working conditions immigrants working in meat factories experienced. The descriptions of how adulterated and unsafe our food was so disgusting that the book was a catalyst for President Theodore Roosevelt’s call to investigate meat processing plants. These investigations led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair later lamented that the public latched onto the unsafe handling of food and overlooked the labor exploitation. But the safe handling of food and labor exploitation are inextricably linked.

Kansas State University has signed a new preclinical research and option agreement with Tonix Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, to develop a vaccine candidate for the prevention of COVID-19. The inventor of the technology, Waithaka Mwangi, professor of diagnostic pathobiology in the K-State College of Veterinary Medicine, will direct the research, which is based on a new vaccine platform that his research team developed for bovine parainfluenza 3 virus, known as BPI3V, which is closely related to human parainfluenza 3 virus.