News & Updates

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.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham announced that it will take part in an NIH-sponsored global clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of novel therapeutic agents in hospitalized adult patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The drug remdesivir will be the first agent evaluated in the trial.

“No matter where you go online these days, there’s bound to be discussion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Some folks are even making outrageous claims that the new coronavirus causing the pandemic was engineered in a lab and deliberately released to make people sick. A new study debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.

A collaborative effort involving Prisma Health, the University of South Carolina and Clemson University has resulted in emergency use authorization for a ventilator expansion device to support multiple patients during times of acute equipment shortages such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The effort aims to save lives at a time when the nation may face a critical shortage of ventilators in the near future.

With the support of Louisiana Governor, John Bel Edwards, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), scientists at LSU Health Shreveport have established the Emerging Viral Threat (EVT) Laboratory to address the need for faster detection and processing of COVID-19 tests. The EVT Lab at LSUHS is the first in North Louisiana approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to conduct and analyze tests to determine if an individual has COVID-19. The EVT Lab is currently in operation and fully staffed as of March 25, 2020.

NIGMS has published a notice of special interest (NOSI) (NOT-GM-20-025) to address the urgent need for research on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They will accept competitive revisions (supplements) in three specific scientific areas: