COVID-19

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…

Some of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s most-read news stories include: Polymers get caught up in love-hate chemistry of oil and water (Feb. 27) Researchers at ORNL and the University of Tennessee achieved a rare look at the inner workings of polymer self-assembly at an oil-water interface to advance materials for neuromorphic computing and bio-inspired technologies.…

The PerkinElmer new Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit is a real-time RT-PCR test intended for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2 in human oropharyngeal, nasopharyngeal and anterior nasal swab samples. Testing is limited to laboratories certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA) to perform high complexity tests, or by similarly…

EUROIMMUN, a PerkinElmer Company, this week announced the launch of the CE marked SARS-CoV-2 Antigen ELISA for specific determination of the SARS-CoV-2 protein. The assay adds to the Company’s broad product portfolio for COVID-19 diagnostics and supports the molecular PCR tests to aid in diagnosing acute SARS-CoV-2 infections. The Antigen ELISA is a laboratory test…

Pioneering research, which reveals digital chest drains generate and distribute less aerosol generated particles compared to traditional water seal systems, has been published in the Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery journal. The research was led by a team of thoracic consultants from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust – home to one of…

EUROIMMUN, a PerkinElmer Company, today announced the launch of the CE marked EURORealTime SARS-CoV-2/Influenza A/B for direct detection of SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus type A and influenza virus type B. It expands the testing portfolio for acute COVID-19 diagnostics by supporting differential diagnostics between SARS-CoV-2 infections and the common flu. It is available in countries accepting…

By Theresa Duque In the early days of the pandemic, amidst all the uncertainty, one thing was for sure: N95 masks – the personal protective respiratory devices that filter out viruses, bacteria and wildfire smoke – were in short supply. So when materials scientists Jeff Urban and Peter Hosemann heard that a local HMO needed…

Thermo Fisher Scientific announces CE-marking of its TaqPath COVID-19, Flu A/B, RSV Combo Kit for the in vitro diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2, influenza A/B and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) A/B infections. Using the new kit, laboratories can now run a single test for SARS-CoV-2, influenza (flu) A/B, and RSV to detect and differentiate between diseases that share…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care professionals and researchers have been confined mostly to using local and national datasets to study the impact of comorbidities (chronic or long-term health conditions), pre-existing medication use, demographics and various interventions on disease course. Now, Purdue University is joining with other organizations for an initiative to accelerate global collaborative…

PerkinElmer, announced today the Lighthouse Lab in Charnwood, Loughborough, England is now processing COVID-19 testing samples as part of the Company’s collaboration with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in support of the UK Government’s NHS Test and Trace program. The facility, operated by PerkinElmer Genomics, began processing samples today, and with its…

By Manette Fisher, [email protected] For responding with innovative solutions during the pandemic, developing solar cell and hydrogen research technology and creatively working with companies, Sandia National Laboratories won six prestigious regional 2020 Federal Laboratory Consortium awards. The awards for the Mid-Continent and Far West regions put a spotlight on Sandia successes in transferring technology, partnerships…

The University of Oxford has joined forces with Thermo Fisher Scientific to ramp up the university’s capacity to deliver COVID-19 testing data. The new rapid testing laboratory and jointly developed Thermo Scientific OmnipathTM Combi SARS-CoV-2 IgG ELISA test detects and quantifies antibodies against the coronavirus and increases the University of Oxford’s testing capacity to up…

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and its partners AMD, Supermicro and Cornelis Networks have installed a new high-performance computing (HPC) cluster with memory and data storage capabilities optimized for data-intensive COVID-19 research and pandemic response. Funded by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the “big memory” cluster, called Mammoth, will be used at LLNL…

PerkinElmer (NYSE: PKI) announced today that EUROIMMUN, a PerkinElmer company, has launched the Anti-SARS-CoV-2 QuantiVac ELISA (IgG) to quantify IgG antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 S1 antigen. The assay is available for countries accepting the CE mark, and the Company plans to file a request for this product with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for…

PerkinElmer (NYSE: PKI) announced  that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to allow sample pooling with PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit to increase the number of individuals who can be tested without increasing resources. This validation of batch testing using the industry’s most sensitive assay to…

By  Jeremy P Rumsey To better understand how the novel coronavirus behaves and how it can be stopped, scientists have completed a three-dimensional map that reveals the location of every atom in an enzyme molecule critical to SARS-CoV-2 reproduction. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering to identify key…