Four potential COVID-19 therapeutics enter Phase 2/3 testing in NIH ACTIV-2 trial: between them Camostat mesilate, an orally administered serine protease inhibitor.

Enrollment has begun to test additional investigational drugs in the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) program. ACTIV is a public-private partnership program to create a coordinated research strategy that prioritizes and speeds development of promising COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. The new agents entering the randomized, placebo-controlled study are part of ACTIV-2, an adaptive trial designed to

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NIH experts discuss SARS-CoV-2 viral variants: a Dr. Fauci’s paper on JAMA

Editorial emphasizes need for global response. The rise of several significant variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has attracted the attention of health and science experts worldwide. In an editorial published today in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, experts from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the

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IgM have a major role in the neutralizing activity of convalescent plasma against SARSCoV-2

Characterization of the humoral response to SARS-CoV-2, the etiological agent of COVID-19, is essential to help control the infection. The neutralization activity of plasma from COVID-19 patients decreases rapidly during the first weeks after recovery. However, the specific role of each immunoglobulin isotype in the overall neutralizing capacity is still not well understood. In this

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Artificial intelligence yields new ways to combat the coronavirus

Countering COVID-19 mutations and designing updated vaccines could occur at lightning speeds thanks to a new, USC-developed AI framework. USC researchers have developed a new method to counter emergent mutations of the coronavirus and hasten vaccine development to stop the pathogen responsible for killing thousands of people and ruining the economy. Using artificial intelligence (AI),

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A new study on Nature shows that BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine should neutralize SARS-CoV-2 spike 69/70 deletion, E484K and N501Y variants.

The Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is effective against covid-19 variants originating in the UK and South Africa. This is the result of a study published this Monday in Nature Medicine , which showed better results in the first case, the British variant (called B.1.1.7), than in the second, the South African, or B.1.351. The differences, however, are small.

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University Health Network-led study shows Peginterferon lambda speeds up clearance of COVID-19 in outpatients

A clinical study led by Dr. Jordan Feld, a liver specialist at UHN’s Toronto Centre for Liver Disease, showed an experimental antiviral drug can significantly speed up recovery for COVID-19 outpatients – patients who do not need to be hospitalized. This could become an important intervention to treat infected patients and help curb community spread,

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Study highlights risk of new SARS-CoV-2 mutations emerging during chronic infection and after treatment with convalescent plasma

SARS-CoV-2 mutations similar to those in the B1.1.7 UK variant could arise in cases of chronic infection, where treatment over an extended period can provide the virus multiple opportunities to evolve, say scientists. Writing in Nature, a team led by Cambridge researchers report how they were able to observe SARS-CoV-2 mutating in the case of an

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The mutation E484K, first identified in the South African SARS-CoV-2 variant, has now been identified in the UK fast-spreading variant

What do we know about the E484K mutation? The E484K mutation is not a new variant in itself, it’s a mutation which occurs in different variants and has already been found in the South African (B.1.351) and Brazilian (B.1.1.28) variants. The mutation is in the spike protein and appears to have an impact on the

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ORF9b from SARS-CoV-2, upon viral infection, antagonizes IFN-β and pro-inflammatory cytokines production mediating its interaction with NEMO and interrupting the K63-linked polyubiquitination of NEMO.

COVID-19 is a current global health threat caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Emerging evidence indicates that SARS-CoV-2 elicits a dysregulated immune response and a delayed interferons (IFNs) expression in patients, which contribute largely to the viral pathogenesis and development of COVID-19. However, underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated. In this paper, it’s reported the

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