COVID-19

By Aliyah Kovner, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Vaccines are turning the tide in the pandemic, but the risk of infection is still present in some situations. If you want to visit a friend, get on a plane, or go see a movie, there is no highly accurate, instant test that can tell you right then and…

Bio-Rad Laboratories, life science researcher and manufacturer of clinical diagnostic products, announces the launch of the Reliance SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Kit (IVD) for European markets after having met the CE-IVD mark requirements. The Reliance SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Kit is a real-time reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR) test that can detect nucleic acid in SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with COVID-19…

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors recognized that patients who developed a “cytokine storm” –– a surge of pro-inflammatory immune proteins –– were often the sickest and at highest risk of dying. But a cytokine storm can also occur in other illnesses, such as influenza. Today, scientists report preliminary results on a sweat sensor that…

By David Chandler, MIT News Office Two MIT professors have proposed a new approach to estimating the risks of exposure to Covid-19 under different indoor settings. The guideline they developed suggests a limit for exposure time, based on the number of people, the size of the space, the kinds of activity, whether masks are worn,…

AnteoTech has announced that its EuGeni Reader and accompanying COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test (ART) have received the CE mark as the company looks to progress with European distribution. The digital multi-test EuGeni Reader eliminates the human error associated with current lateral flow test interpretation and can support high-sensitivity quantitative readouts for time-critical disease and clinical…

Mologic’s rapid antigen self-test for COVID-19 has been selected by the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative launched by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The initiative aims to speed innovation in the development, commercialization and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 testing. Mologic’s easy-to-use, nasal swab test is intended for use by non-health professionals…

By Troy Rummler, Sandia News Media Many medical professionals and other essential, front-line workers have struggled for the past year with persistent shortages of N95 masks. Soon, they might get relief from a Sandia National Laboratories invention — a comfortable, reusable, sterilizable respirator that could ease demand during current or future health crises. Sandia has…

Euroimmun, a PerkinElmer company, has announced the launch of the SARS-CoV-2 NeutraLISA assay, a surrogate neutralization test intended for the detection of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing COVID-19. The CE marked assay adds to the Company’s portfolio of COVID-19 diagnostics and is currently available in more than 30 countries that accept the CE…

ACS Omega Scientists have developed vaccines for COVID-19 with record speed. The first two vaccines widely distributed in the U.S. are mRNA-based and require ultracold storage (-70° C for one and -20° C for the other). Now, researchers reporting in ACS Omega have developed a tamper-proof temperature indicator that can alert health care workers when…

By Lisa Peña Collaborative teams that include Southwest Research Institute staff received two of six recently awarded San Antonio Medical Foundation (SAMF) bioscience grants. SwRI, in collaboration with UT Health San Antonio and University Health System, received a nearly $200,000 grant to develop machine learning algorithms for cancer detection. A team from SwRI, UT Health…

La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), one of the leading research organizations dedicated to studying the immune system announced today that it has signed a licensing agreement with Leinco Technologies, a premier developer and manufacturer of leading-edge recombinant proteins, antibodies and conjugates. Leinco also provides custom manufacturing services to the diagnostic and biopharmaceutical industries to…

Atik Cameras, a designer and manufacturer of advanced scientific imaging solutions, has further expanded its collaboration with leading global Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of real time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) DNA amplifiers, securing multiple new contracts to supply high-performing cameras for reliable COVID-19 testing. Under the new agreements, OEMs will access Atik Cameras’ robust range…

By Anne Stark, LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are leveraging their extensive experience studying the movement of airborne hazards to better understand the movement of virus-like particles through the air and to identify effective countermeasures. While the burden of airborne diseases is known to be large, its true scope is underappreciated. LLNL researchers…

By John Wise, Operations Team Member and Dr. Steve Arlington, President Pistoia Alliance One of the side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been its impact on digital transformation of the workplace and the lab. How and where we work, and how we conduct research, is changing considerably. Developments in technology have delivered significant benefits…

By Mike Williams, Rice University Researchers at Rice University have received funding for up to $1 million to develop a real-time sensor system able to detect minute amounts of the airborne virus that causes COVID-19 infection. The researchers at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering and Wiess School of Natural Sciences — chemical and biomolecular engineer…

By Tim Studt, Contributing Editor For 62 years, R&D World and its predecessors have published an annual R&D funding forecast. These reports predict the combined dollar amount of R&D investments expected by industry, government and academia for the upcoming calendar year. Over those years, the publications these reports have appeared in have changed their ownership…

Dr. Steve Arlington, president of the Pistoia Alliance, a global not-for-profit advocating for greater collaboration in biopharma, has called on the life science industry to learn the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and seek out more opportunities to collaborate. COVID-19 dealt the sector a complex challenge, but it has also been a catalyst for organizations…

Written by Daniel Ackerman, MIT News Office When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, doctors and researchers rushed to find effective treatments. There was little time to spare. “Making new drugs takes forever,” says Caroline Uhler, a computational biologist in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems…

Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) today introduced the Research Investment to Spark the Economy (RISE) Act to authorize nearly $25 billion in support to U.S. researchers who have been impacted by the pandemic. Although coronavirus-related research is a current federal government priority, most other research has been delayed due to…

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s popular lecture series, “Science on Saturday,” is going virtual in 2021 with the theme “Combating COVID-19.” The series, targeted to middle and high school students, runs Saturdays at 10 a.m. Feb. 6 through Feb. 27. Each Saturday will feature a different lecture presented by leading Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers…

A Purdue University-affiliated startup is receiving national support to pursue a strategy to treat severe COVID-19 cases and possible future outbreaks involving other viruses. Akanocure Pharmaceuticals has received a $256,000 Phase I research grant from the National Science Foundation. “NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and…

Wellcome Leap (Leap), a U.S.-based non-profit organization founded by the Wellcome Trust to accelerate innovations that benefit global health, today announced the first 21 participants in the Leap Health Breakthrough Network, a global group of leading academic and research institutions committed to solving the world’s most serious health challenges — such as cancer and infectious…

The Invitrogen Intact Virus Precipitation Reagent and Dynabeads Intact Virus Enrichment kits* are optimized to isolate intact SARS-CoV-2 virus particles such as infectious virus, inactivated virus or virus like particles (VLPs). While virus cultures are often required to obtain sufficient virus yield, long isolation times can slow down sample analysis. Thermo Fisher’s Intact Virus Precipitation…

ConserV Bioscience Limited (CBL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have agreed to collaborate on the development of a broad-spectrum or “universal” coronavirus vaccine. This collaboration brings together CBL’s expertise in identifying antigens and LLNL’s nanolipoprotein delivery system. The vaccine has been designed to provide broad-spectrum protection against coronavirus pathogens of human and animal origin,…

Cross-disciplinary scientists and engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are working to learn how Intrapulmonary Percussive Ventilation (IPV) helps clear mucus from blocking the airways of the human lung, a common reaction to the COVID-19 virus. Researchers, using some of the same modeling and experimental techniques from the Laboratory’s nuclear weapons mission, are working to…