The engineering of specific virus-targeting receptors onto a patient's own immune cells is now being explored by scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS), as a potential therapy for controlling infectious diseases, including the COVID-19-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2.

University of Oxford researchers working in an unprecedented vaccine development effort to prevent COVID-19 have started screening healthy volunteers (aged 18-55) for their upcoming ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine trial in the Thames Valley Region. The vaccine based on an adenovirus vaccine vector and the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is already in production but won’t be ready for some weeks still.

An exploratory randomized, controlled study on the safety and efficacy of either lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) or Arbidol - antivirals that are used in some countries against HIV-1 and to treat influenza, respectively - as treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, suggests that neither drug improves the clinical outcome of patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate cases of the disease over supportive care.

The National Institutes of Health and the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH) are bringing together more than a dozen leading biopharmaceutical companies, the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency to develop an international strategy for a coordinated research response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientists across the globe are rushing to find inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are using computer simulations to identify promising compounds before conducting actual experiments in the lab. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have used computer modeling to assess four peptides that mimic the virus-binding domain of the human protein that allows SARS-CoV-2 to enter cells.

Millions of Americans are being impacted by the psychological fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic aftermath, and large numbers may experience emotional distress and be at increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, according to a new article published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A University of Cincinnati ear, nose and throat specialist says your nose may hold a clue in identifying COVID-19. The loss of smell may be a key indicator.

Physicians are increasingly recognizing the importance of the nasal cavity in determining the physiology of COVID-19, explains Ahmad Sedaghat, an associate professor in the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine's Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and an UC Health physician specializing in diseases of the nose and sinuses.