Amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), people with comorbidities are at a higher risk of developing severe disease. In the fight against COVID-19, scientists are racing to determine effective treatments to reduce mortality among infected individuals. Now, researchers at Harvard Medical […]
The importance of cross-neutralizing antibodies to the recently emerged variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is evident in light of the fact that these variants are highly transmissible as well as being able to evade immune responses to earlier variants of this virus. A new preprint […]
A promising new study, released as a preprint on the bioRxiv* server, reports on the high neutralizing efficacy of a polyclonal swine antibody against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the pathogen responsible for the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). By demonstrating the ability of this antibody to […]
The effect of different neutralizing antibodies, both vaccine-elicited and from convalescent sera, suggests new variants are emerging that can evade the human immune response. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) binds to host cells via its spike protein, which has two parts, the S1 and S2 subunits. The […]
As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues, scientists race to develop or find effective treatments to stem its spread. At the same time, health experts and scientists continue to determine which existing drugs could be repurposed to treat COVID-19. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong found that Clofazimine, a […]
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread all over the world, its causative pathogen, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is being monitored for the emergence of new variants and alterations in viral biology. In the interests of cost-effectiveness and rapidity, amplicon-based sequencing of the […]
Since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic’s first emergence, limited progress has been made in developing effective and safe antivirals to prevent and treat infection by the pathogen responsible, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). A new study recently appeared in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science that […]
As vaccine efforts against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes the coronavirus disease, roll out in various countries, Moderna ups the game by testing its next-generation COVID-19 vaccine. Image Credit: Corona Borealis Studio / Shutterstock Called the messenger ribonucleic acid 1283 (mRNA-1283), the vaccine […]
In the year since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, millions of families have endured the excruciating rise and fall of the U.S. outbreak — waves of sickness that leave untold wounds long after hospitalizations ebb and infections subside. Some have borne the tragedy more than others, with […]
The 160-bed hospital in the Po River Valley town of Chiari has no more room for patients stricken with the highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first identified in Britain that has put hospitals in Italy’s northern Brescia province on high alert. That history was repeating itself one year after Lombardy […]