The causative agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. To date, the virus has spread to over 192 countries and territories, infected over 173.6 million people and caused over 3.7 million deaths. The unprecedented speed with […]
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – the causative pathogen of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – is only one of the seven pathogenic coronaviruses (CoVs) to have emerged among humans over less than 20 years. The massive scale of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to intensive research on the creation of pan-coronavirus […]
Researchers in the United States have identified antibody-inducing epitopes of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals vaccinated against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that could be used for future diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccine design. Using an approach called reverse vaccinology, the team identified distinct amino acid motifs and epitopes of the SARS-CoV-2 spike […]
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has multiple and diverse clinical manifestations leading to high mortality and morbidity. Since December 2019, when the SARS-CoV-2 was first identified in Wuhan, China, it has been responsible for over 169 million confirmed infections and over 3.51 million deaths the world over. […]
A team of international scientists recently conducted a randomized clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy profiles of a novel probiotic formulation in symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. The findings indicate that the probiotic formulation is highly effective in reducing symptom severity in COVID-19 patients without causing any adverse events. The study is […]
The nanotechnology-based medicine platforms against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) bears hope for relief from the pandemic to save lives and mitigate the infection as part of a broader global public health agenda. In a recent review article, an interdisciplinary research team discussed the potential of nanoparticles (NPs) as a drug itself or as a platform […]
A new study led by Hans-Martin Jäck of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany engineered clusters of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies using a transgenic mouse model. A unique characteristic for the antibodies was the different ways it bound to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the overall reduction in the viral spread for […]
A new study, released on the bioRxiv* preprint server, shows that rapamycin, an immunosuppressive drug used in some cancers, and its analogs, may have an undesirable effect on viral entry into the host cells. This finding could inform their use to treat symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). There is a serious lack of effective antivirals […]
The lack of new or repurposed drugs to treat patients with severe or critical coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been one of the biggest hurdles to reducing mortality rates in the ongoing pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). A new study, published online in the journal Drug Development Research, describes […]
Researchers in the United States, UK, and Canada have published a commentary challenging the suggestion that the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) may not be airborne. The novel SARS-CoV-2 virus is the agent responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that continues to pose a significant threat to global public […]
