• Predicting Unprecedented Events

    Yogi Berra said that “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” but scientists have not given up on trying to do so. Researchers combined avalanche physics with ecosystem data to create a computational method for predicting extreme ecological events. The method may also have applications in economics and politics.

  • Touting Criticized Study, White House Presses FDA to Authorize Hydroxychloroquine — Again

    In March, the FDA, on scant evidence, initially gave emergency use authorization to hydroxychloroquine. The agency in April issued a safety warning about potential cardiac problems before withdrawing its approval last month. The reason for the FDA authorization withdrawal was the results of several large-scale, randomized, double-blind trials, all of which showed that not only does hydroxychloroquine offer no benefits to COVID-19-infetced patients, but that it substantially increases the risk of serious heart problems and heart-related deaths. Laurie McGinley and Josh Dawsey write in the Washington Post that earlier this month, a Henry Ford Health System study found death rates were 50 percent lower among the patients treated with hydroxychloroquine, the authors said. They also said the drug posed no safety problems. The study has been criticized by scientists, but the White House and Trump supporters in the media have urged the FDA to reauthorize hydroxychloroquine for emergency use.

  • Coronavirus and Cancer Hijack the Same Parts in Human Cells to Spread – and Our Team Identified Existing Cancer Drugs that Could Fight COVID-19

    Most antivirals in use today target parts of an invading virus itself. Unfortunately, SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – has proven hard to kill. But viruses rely on cellular mechanisms in human cells to help them spread, so it should be possible to change an aspect of a person’s body to prevent that and slow down the virus enough to allow the immune system to fight the invader off. Nevan Krogan writes in The Conversation, “I am a quantitative biologist, and my lab built a map of how the coronavirus uses human cells. We used that map to find already existing drugs that could be repurposed to fight COVID-19 and have been working with an international group of researchers called the QBI Coronavirus Research Group to see if the drugs we identified showed any promise. Many have.

  • The Danger of Drug Research in a Hurry

    The number of studies on COVID-19 is increasing just as rapidly as the number of infections at the beginning of the pandemic. Felicitas Witte writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [in German] that in mid-March there were still 84, today there are more than 2,200. Wolf-Dieter Ludwig, chairman of the drug commission of the German medical profession and an oncologist in Berlin, is concerned about the number. “This is more mass than class,” he says. “Many of the ongoing studies are so badly planned that it is already clear that a reliable result will not come out.” The corona crisis culminated in what he had been criticizing for a number of years: Medicines should come onto the market faster and faster, but the quality of the studies and ultimately the patient suffered as a result.

  • A Coronavirus Vaccine Is Still Months Away, but an Antibody Treatment Could Be Closer

    Vaccines have gotten all the attention in the race to fight Covid-19, but there is a major push in the United States to develop antibody therapies to treat coronavirus. Jen Christensen writes for CNN that there’s so much of a push that some scientists think these treatments may be available this year, even before a vaccine.

  • Controversy on COVID-19 Mask Study Spotlights Messiness of Science during a Pandemic

    Late last week, a group of researchers posted a letter that they had sent to the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) requesting the retraction of a study published the week before that purportedly showed mask use was the most effective intervention in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in New York City. Stephanie Soucheray writes for CIDRAP that though PNAS editors have yet to respond to the request, scientists have roundly criticized the study’s methodology, and the entire kerfuffle has highlighted the difficulty of “doing science” amid a full-blown pandemic.

  • Common Drug Reduces Coronavirus Deaths, Scientists Report

    In an unexpected glimmer of hope amid an expanding pandemic, scientists at the University of Oxford said on Tuesday that an inexpensive and commonly available drug reduced deaths in patients with severe Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Benjamin Mueller and Roni Caryn Rabin write in the New York Times that if the finding is borne out, the drug, a steroid called dexamethasone, would be the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in the sickest patients and may save hundreds of thousands of lives, eventually even millions, altering the course of the pandemic.

  • How Antibodies from Llamas May Lead to COVID-19 Treatment

    Scientists hope the special antibodies that llamas make can be directed against SARS-CoV-2 to help find our way out of the pandemic. Rockefeller University says that humans, too, make antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, and many groups are working on developing treatments based on them. Llama antibodies, however, come in a simpler design than their human counterparts. “For reasons that we don’t really understand, these animals make this variant of antibody that just has fantastic properties,” says Michael P. Rout, a structural biologist at Rockefeller. “It contains the good disease-recognizing parts of a human antibody, packed into a condensed warhead.”

  • Research Integrity: Why We Should Trust Registered Clinical Trials

    In a time when we have to rely on clinical trials for COVID-19 drugs and vaccines, a new study brings good news about the credibility of registered clinical trials.

  • Breakthrough for Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine

    When it comes to livestock, foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is probably the most devastating picornavirus on the planet. FMD is a serious and economically devastating livestock disease. Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), the virus causing FMD, is extremely contagious and afflicts animals with cloven hooves like cows, pigs, sheep and deer.

  • Scientists Aim Gene-Targeting Breakthrough against COVID-19

    A team of scientists from Stanford University is working with researchers at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility located at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), to develop a gene-targeting, antiviral agent against COVID-19, the Berkeley Labreports.

  • New Identification of Genetic Basis of COVID-19 Susceptibility Will Aid Treatment and Prevention

    The clinical presentation of COVID-19 varies from patient to patient and understanding individual genetic susceptibility to the disease is therefore vital to prognosis, prevention, and the development of new treatments. The European Society of Human Genetics reports that for the first time, Italian scientists have been able to identify the genetic and molecular basis of this susceptibility to infection as well as to the possibility of contracting a more severe form of the disease.

  • Majority of First-Wave COVID-19 Clinical Trials Have Significant Design Shortcomings, Study Finds

    Most of the registered clinical trials of potential treatments for COVID-19 underway as of late March were designed in ways that will greatly limit their value in understanding potential treatments, according to a study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

  • Asymptomatic Spread of Coronavirus is “Very Rare,” WHO Says

    Coronavirus patients without symptoms aren’t driving the spread of the virus, World Health Organization officials said Monday, casting doubt on concerns by some researchers that the disease could be difficult to contain due to asymptomatic infections, CNBC reports.

  • Was COVID-19 Created in a Lab? China Has Some Urgent Questions to Answer

    In an interview with  The Telegraph’s Allison Pearsonon Thursday, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, said it was likely that coronavirus was the result of a Chinese lab accidental release. Charles Moore writes in The Telegraph that Sir Richard’s interview chiefly concerned a new learned paper about the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, written by distinguished scientists, the vaccinologist, Birger Sorensen, and the immunologist, Angus Dalgleish, in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery.