Lifeboat Foundation

At a time of unprecedented panic over the rapidly spreading COVID-19 coronavirus, several research groups are asking whether existing therapies could be repurposed in fighting the disease. And pretty much everything seems to be on the table, including melatonin, the hormone that’s sold over-the-counter as a sleep aid.

The melatonin suggestion was published Monday in the journal Cell Discovery by Cleveland Clinic researchers, who hit on the hormone after analyzing the genomes of 15 human coronaviruses. The team compared COVID-19 with the coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak of 2003 using a technique called “network proximity analysis” to identify combinations of existing drugs that may be able to target cellular factors that allow the viruses to replicate.

The analysis turned up three potential drug combinations: melatonin plus chemotherapy drug mercaptopurine; sirolimus, most commonly used to prevent organ-transplant rejection, combined with another chemo drug, dactinomycin; and breast cancer drug toremifene plus emodin, a chemical found in plants like rhubarb.

Chronic lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, are the second leading cause of death in the world. Currently, only limited therapeutic options exist for chronic lung diseases; in particular, causative therapeutic approaches are missing. Lung transplantation remains the only available therapy for many patients with end-stage lung disease; however, the number of patients listed for lung transplantation by far surpasses the number of suitable donor organs.

Beyond lung transplantation, several approaches to repair and regenerate lung tissue, with the aim of restoring lung function, have made substantial progress in recent years and hold great promise for future therapies. Importantly, advancement in our understanding of the underlying pathogenesis of distinct chronic lung diseases will be crucial for the development of novel, targeted therapeutic approaches.

The mission of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) is to alleviate suffering from respiratory disease and promote lung health through research, knowledge sharing, and medical and public education. In support of this mission, the ERS hosts the annual Lung Science Conference (LSC) in Estoril, Portugal, which brings together leading experts (basic scientists, physician scientists and clinicians alike) on distinct topics of relevance to respiratory medicine. In addition, the ERS is strongly committed to encourage, nurture and mentor future generations of world class respiratory scientists and clinicians. The LSC represents one of the main platforms to encourage debate and interaction between young doctoral and postdoctoral scientists with established investigators. In particular, this is facilitated by special mentoring sessions and the Young Investigator Competition, which enables younger delegates to present themselves and their work to established investigators.

More than 100 COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Beijing are receiving injections of mesenchymal stem cells to help them fend off the disease. The experimental treatment is part of an ongoing clinical trial, which coordinators say has shown early promise in alleviating COVID-19 symptoms.

Several experts express skepticism of the trial’s early results, suggest resources would be better spent exploring other treatments.

Working around the clock, scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts can run about 2,000 COVID-19 tests per day. In places where testing is still scarce — which is to say much of the world — similar efforts can provide vital relief to public-health systems stretched to their limits. As they shutter their labs indefinitely, tens of thousands of scientists are volunteering to help the pandemic relief efforts in any way they can.

As labs shut down around the world, researchers are finding creative ways to donate their time, supplies and expertise.

Covid-19 is a respiratory infection that damages the lungs. New evidence has emerged that Covid-19 also causes damage to the heart even with no preexisting conditions:

Objective To explore the association between cardiac injury and mortality in patients with COVID-19.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study was conducted from January 20, 2020, to February 10, 2020, in a single center at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China; the final date of follow-up was February 15, 2020. All consecutive inpatients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were included in this study.

Continue reading “Association of Cardiac Injury With Mortality in Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19 in Wuhan, China” »

Abbott Laboratories is unveiling a coronavirus test that can tell if someone is infected in as little as 5 minutes, and is so small and portable it can be used in almost any health-care setting.

The Army has a message for its retirees: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight the novel coronavirus.

A message sent by Defense Finance and Accounting Services, which processes and dispenses retiree pay, asked troops who had previously served in specific health care specialties to consider “re-joining the team” to address the current pandemic crisis. It’s signed by Lt. Gen. Thomas Seamands, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Army Personnel, G-1.

“We need to hear from you STAT!” reads the message, obtained by Military.com.

Circa 2017

Plant viruses, the simple obligate intracellular parasites with small genomes, rely entirely on host machineries for their life cycle including replication, intracellular (cell-to-cell) and systemic movement (Nelson and Citovsky, 2005). Virus infections pose serious threats to agriculture and cause huge economic losses. Despite encoding only a limited number of proteins, numerous interactions of viral RNAs/proteins with host factors have puzzled the plant virologists for over a century and the complexity of these interactions is just becoming understood.

Plants have developed two major strategies to counteract virus infections: resistance (R) gene-mediated, and RNA silencing-based defenses. In addition, the mutation in essential genes for viral infection also causes plant resistance against viruses, called recessive gene-mediated resistance. These approaches have been used in crop protections and have shown significant economic impact (Abel et al., 1986; Whitham et al., 1996; Baulcombe, 2004; Kang et al., 2005; Wang and Krishnaswamy, 2012).

This Research Topic combines 13 publications, including 9 review articles and 4 research articles, covering almost every aspect of plant-virus interactions. The featured in-depth topic reviews in various sub-fields provide readers a convenient way to understand the current status of the related sub-fields and the featured research articles expand the current knowledge in related sub-fields.

Circa 2016

Air pollution has a significant and pervasive impact on public health. According to the World Health Organization, it is now considered “the world’s largest single environmental health risk,” with more than three million people dying every year as a result. This is more than twice the number of people that die in vehicle accidents each year.

Health and safety are important to us. Just as we’ve designed Model S and Model X to avoid collisions or protect their occupants when one happens, we felt compelled to protect them against the statistically more relevant hazard of air pollution*. Inspired by the air filtration systems used in hospitals, clean rooms, and the space industry, we developed a HEPA filtration system capable of stripping the outside air of pollen, bacteria, and pollution before they enter the cabin and systematically scrubbing the air inside the cabin to eliminate any trace of these particles. The end result is a filtration system hundreds of times more efficient than standard automotive filters, capable of providing the driver and her passengers with the best possible cabin air quality no matter what is happening in the environment around them.

Continue reading “Putting the Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode to the Test” »