2020

Zeng et al., investigated neonates born to mothers with COVID19 recruited from Wuhan Children's Hospital (Wuhan, China) (1). Consistent with previous studies, clinical symptoms from these neonates with or at risk of COVID-19 were mild with favourable outcomes. Of the 3 out of 33 neonates that had early-onset SARS-CoV-2 ...

In a recent pre-peer reviewed bioRxiv manuscript, Bette Korber and colleagues have used a newly developed analysis pipeline to track mutations in the Spike protein; being the target of drug and vaccine development. They identified 14 accumulating mutations, revealing an early warning..

IUIS Webinar on Interferons as 1st responders by Professor Eleanor Fish (University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)."Can antivirals that target the host and not the virus improve outcomes for COVID-19 patients?"Highlights from her talk include: Interferons are the first line of defence against all viral infections. Viruses are detected by different...

Over 90 vaccine candidates are being developed as part of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A snapshot of the eight different ways to elicit host immunity with vaccines under development is given in a guide by Ewen Callaway in a recent Nature article. Candidates can take the form of inactivated virus, viral vectors, nucleic acid...

Study by Kiesha Prem and colleagues (1) indicate the effects of extending or relaxing physical distancing control measures on the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan, China. They use data on COVID-19 spread from Wuhan and empirical data from China on the number of contacts per day by age group at home, school, work, and other locations.

This pre-peer reviewed article compares the humoral and cellular immune response of a self-amplifying (sa)RNA encoding a pre-fusion stabilised SARS-CoV-2 spike protein encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle (LNP) in a preclinical murine model, with the immune profile of natural infection in recovered COVID-19 patients.

Investigators in a brief communication in Nature Medicine utilised the Covid19 cell atlas database to identify gene expression of the SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor ACE2 and other genes potentially associated with pathogenesis using known single-cell RNA sequencing datasets.

A recent commentary in Nature Reviews Immunology cites the role of complement in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and that possibly targeting the inhibition of the complement cascade may be an important treatment. Complement is part of the innate immune response and is involved with the initiation pro-inflammatory...

Did you watch the IUIS Webinar on The Global Scientific Response to COVID-19 by Giuseppe Ippolito (Scientific Director at the National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome, Italy)."Giuseppe Ippolito shares his opinion on why policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic must be based on scientific evidence – and why policymakers must invest in science to be prepared for future infectious diseases."

Scientists in Japan found that the combination of FDA-approved drugs, Nelfinavir (a protease inhibitor) and Cepharanthine (an anti-inflammatory) showed a synergistic inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro. Additional studies have suggested that Cepharanthine targets both SARS-CoV-2 entry and viral replication.