Category Archives: BioEngineering

Dorms are empty and classroom lights are off at the vast majority of Americas colleges and universities, but that hasnt stopped many in academia from jumping in to help try to meet the massive need for innovative treatments, vaccines, personal protection equipment (PPE) and medical devices in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Engineers, doctors, scientists, researchers, doctors, and college students across the country have quickly shifted gears and are applying their skills and knowledge to fighting the virus, which has infected more than a million people around the globe. The federal government and most states with stay-at-home orders have designated researchers focused on the outbreak as essential critical infrastructure workers, allowing them to continue working in labs and offices.

A number of schools, including Rice University, the University of Texas, the University of Illinois, and the University of Vermont, have been working on new ventilator designs, a critical need with shortages at many hospitals around the country. Faculty from the University of South Carolina, in collaboration with the medical nonprofit Prisma Health, developed an FDA-approved 3D- printed splitter device called the VESper that can treat two patients on one ventilator. And a team at University of California, Berkeley has modified sleep apnea machines so they can provide respiratory support for noncritical COVID-19 patients.

Given the rapid pace of innovation and, in some cases, the short time from inventors bench to hospital room, ensuring that devices are safe and reliable is a key issue for those on the front lines.

Researchers at academic institutions, non-traditional manufacturers, communities of makers, and individuals are banding together to support and fill local and national needs, an FDA spokesperson wrote in a statement to the PBS NewsHour. The goal [of the FDA] is to enable and empower people to make a positive impact in the ways they are able, while ensuring their efforts and outputs are safe.

The FDAs Center for Devices and Radiological Health the government agency tasked with regulating firms who manufacture medical devices sold in the U.S. is using Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) to determine if it is reasonable to believe that the [products] may be effective and that the known and potential benefits outweigh the known and potential risks. The FDA declined to disclose the number of EUA requests it has received in response to the COVID-19.

Here are three more ways universities are contributing to the global virus response.

In the dash to prevent needless deaths, some scientists have postponed or abandoned long-term projects to engage in new coronavirus work. Others, like Matt Whitehill, who is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Washington, have sped up existing projects that might eventually prove helpful. Whitehill and a team of fellow computer scientists and electrical engineering students, along with collaborators at Seattle Childrens Hospital and U.W. Medical Center, are working on a cough-detection app for smart mobile devices.

Photo by Getty Images

Cough-detection research at UW began in 2011. Different teams have chased the technology over the years, but Whitehill says there is now a sense of urgency to deploy it. The COVID-19 outbreak has really expedited some of our timelines because there is such a large need for this technology, Whitehill said.

The goal of the technology, part of a move toward remote patient monitoring (RPM) in health care, is to assist both patients and their medical providers monitor coughing while someone is recovering at home from COVID-19 or other diseases that cause coughing symptoms. The app relies on an algorithm Whitehill and his colleagues developed that can detect cough sounds amid other background noises such as conversations; those coughs are then recorded in the app or the device, and can be kept private or shared with others, including health care providers.

Whitehill says as health care facilities become overwhelmed, some patients are being sent home who would normally recover in the hospital. Health care providers or community organizations may want to have some insight into how those patients are doing when they go home, Whitehill said. Automated remote monitoring allows us to get an insight into whether that patients health condition is improving or deteriorating in an objectively reliable, real time way without needing to make contact with the subjects.

Other groups are also working on cough-detecting technology, but Whitehill says UWs app is unique because its aimed at providing a high level of accuracy and protecting user privacy. Only cough counts are recorded and the data is analyzed on the phone instead of a remote server. The research team is currently seeking volunteers to help improve the app by submitting cough sounds and other vocalizations.

The technology can only monitor cough counts, but Whitehill says eventually he hopes to be able to discriminate between cough types e.g. wet or dry. Because COVID-19 is associated with a dry cough, that kind of information could potentially help health care providers more accurately monitor the condition of COVID-19 patients.

Universities are also joining a number of companies and individual volunteers around the country who are developing new solutions for creating and ramping up production of PPE. Northwestern University, MIT, University of the New Hampshire and Michigan State University are among a number of schools that have started 3D-printed face shield projects.

Stanford University bioengineering associate professor Manu Prakash, whose work has long-focused on innovative, low-cost medical devices, is taking a different approach. In early March, he returned from a trip to Europe, where, he said, he had seen how the coronavirus was taking a toll. Prakash then started an open source project to modify full-face snorkel masks into reusable PPE for health care workers.

Courtesy PrakashLab/Stanford

I was highly concerned about what was going to happen in the PPE context in the U.S., Prakash said. I love diving and I have had a snorkel mask for a long while. So that was the starting point.

Working with a number of collaborators, including Boston Scientific, Medtronics and the University of Utah, Prakashs team developed a 3D-printed filter and injection molded attachment that can be connected to the masks air-intake tube, which is aimed back and away from the face. In their initial design, the team used FDA-approved medical-grade filters that are used in various applications around hospitals but not currently for PPE; recently theyve begun testing other types of filtration systems, including HEPA filters used for industrial purposes.

Prakash says the design, which incorporates a face shield and a respirator in one device, could be helpful to health care workers who typically use separate face shields and masks, if the supplies are available. Face mask shortages have become a widespread problem for health care workers around the country.

Its a very technical challenge because youre talking about [containing] aerosolized droplets that are 300 nanometers (0.3 microns) or smaller, said Prakash, referring to the imperceptible spray of saliva that can come out of someones mouth or nose. Frugal science in this context is about coming up with ways to do things quickly, but still having the highest level of safety standards. You have to be extremely serious about really looking critically at the sets of solutions.

Everyone has a shot of making a contribution, and universities are often where it starts.

In addition to cost, one of the key goals of the project is to ensure the modified snorkel-masks can be reused multiple times safely. Prakash says in the past, more medical products, like elastomeric respirators, were made to be reused over and over again with proper cleaning and decontamination. But our disposable culture has led to more single-use products like N95 masks, and now medical professionals are confronted with the fact that there just arent enough disposable supplies to go around.

The research team has been submerging the masks in solutions of bleach and exposing them to heat, among other approved sterilization methods. Prakash says testing has shown the masks survive common decontamination protocols.

The masks, which have been submitted to the FDA for emergency use authorization, are currently undergoing clinical testing in three hospitals. The team is also shipping 100 more to clinicians for pilot testing and another 1,000 to health care workers around the country who are in urgent need.

The innovation that arguably could have the largest influence on the global COVID-19 response is the development of a vaccine. Of the nearly 80 vaccine candidates now in the works, most are being developed from pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and abroad. But researchers in academia are also involved in the effort, often building on previous vaccine research. Thats the case for a team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine that worked on vaccines for SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2014; both viruses are closely related to the current coronavirus. Earlier this month, they announced an early-stage vaccine candidate called PittCoVacc in a peer-reviewed paper published by The Lancet. The team is also testing an innovative delivery system for that vaccine: a small patch made with 400 tiny needles made out of dissolvable sugars which are saturated with the vaccine.

Andrea Gambotto, M.D., associate professor of surgery at Pitt, holds a COVID-19 microneedle array vaccine on his fingertip. The 400 tiny antigen-tipped needles poke into the skin to stimulate antibody generation. Photo by UPMC

Dr. Louis Falo, who developed the patch, says one of the benefits of the technology is it doesnt have to be refrigerated. Most vaccines have to be refrigerated from when theyre made, all the way until they are in the patient, Falo said. For underdeveloped countries and global vaccination programs, thats an obstacle. Its really expensive and some places arent even equipped with refrigeration. The patches are very stable at room temperature and I think thats a big plus.

Harvard University public health professor Dr. Barry Bloom, who is not involved in current vaccine research but has been tracking developments, cautions against latching on to any one vaccine candidate or delivery system at this point.

But he says increased collaboration and the speed at which results are now being shared in the scientific world is unprecedented. The diversity of vaccine candidates and other innovations is really exciting, said Dr. Bloom. Everyone has a shot of making a contribution, and universities are often where it starts.

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How universities are developing COVID-19 solutions in real time - PBS NewsHour

The National Institutes of Health is enrolling up to 10,000 healthy people in a study that seeks to determine how many people have immunity to the novel coronavirus.

Investigators will take blood from participants and test it for antibodies the body produces to fight off infection. The idea is to figure out the true number of people who've been exposed to the virus, whether or not they had symptoms.

The study is one of many public and private efforts to expand "serology" or immunity tests in the US. Since the tests can measure a response to the virus long after it's occurred, they've been called the next frontier of coronavirus screening and should help the NIH understand the extent of its spread.

Read more: Tests that can tell if you're immune to the coronavirus are on the way. Here are the companies racing to bring them to the US healthcare system.

Led by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the rollout is one of the biggest serology efforts at the federal level thus far.

"This study will give us a clearer picture of the true magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States by telling us how many people in different communities have been infected without knowing it, because they had a very mild, undocumented illness or did not access testing while they were sick," said Anthony S. Fauci, a key member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force and the director of NIAID, in a press release.

Whereas reporting of confirmed cases in the US has mostly relied on molecular tests that determine the active presence of the virus in a person's airways, NIH investigators will analyze the blood for two kinds of antibodies indicating prior exposure, proteins called IgM and IgG.

The former develops quickly and typically lasts for a week or two. The latter has a longer life and is involved in the body's secondary immune response, according to the NIH.

"An antibody test is looking back into the immune system's history with a rearview mirror," said Matthew J. Memoli, the study's principal investigator.

Volunteers near Washington, DC will give blood in-person at the NIH campus in Maryland. The NIH will ship kits made by medical device company Neoteryx to other participants for at-home use.

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The study is not open to people with current coronavirus symptoms or those with laboratory-confirmed histories of the virus. People who suspect they recovered without tests or never had symptoms consistent with the virus in the first place are encouraged to enroll, however.

People interested in joining can contact the NIH at clinicalstudiesunit@nih.gov and will be asked to consent over the phone. Enrollees can request their results after a prolonged waiting period of weeks or months, according to the NIH.

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Coronavirus: Antibody study on 10,000 people, how many were infected - Business Insider - Business Insider

Published April 10, 2020 at 12:31 PM

As the world struggles to contain the coronavirus, we begin with encouraging news from the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reported to be out of intensive care at St. Thomas hospital where hes been cared for since Monday. A spokesperson from Downing Street said the prime minister is back on a ward where hes being closely monitored. The death toll continues to rise in the United States with more than 16, 000 deaths. The epicenter, New York state, reported its single worst day on Wednesday with 799 deaths. And, 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, bringing the total number of claims to more than 16 million. Economists say the US unemployment rate is now 13%, the worst since the Great Depression.

CGTNs White House Correspondent Nathan King reports.

To discuss the impact of the coronavirus in the United States:

As the death toll rises from the coronavirus, scientists around the world are racing to find a vaccine that will protect people from getting sick.

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The Heat: COVID-19 and the race for a vaccine - CGTN America

In a bid to fight against the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), using its scientific endeavour, has developed a host of protective equipment, ventilators and sanitisation equipment for helping the frontline workers.

The DRDO has developed 11 such products to combat the coronavirus. These products include visor-based full-face shield, isolation shelter, mobile area sanitisation system, advanced N99 masks, personal sanitisation equipment, portable backpack area sanitisation equipment, advanced PPEs (Personal Protection Equipment) for doctors and frontline health workers, ventilators and sanitisers.

With an anticipation of a growing need for ventilators in the coming days for patients fighting the coronavirus, the DRDOs Defence Bioengineering and Electromedical Laboratory in Bangalore, in partnership with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Scanray Pvt Ltd in Mysuru, will develop modern and portable ventilators at the earliest.

And, according to sources in the DRDO, works on the development of such ventilators are progressing and each scientist and technician is working to come up with the best and most advanced form of ventilator. Apart from this, a personal sanitisation equipment which is a full body disinfection chamber has been developed by the DRDOs Vehicle Research and Development Establishment laboratory in Ahmednagar. This personal sanitisation equipment, which is currently being used at the entrance of many markets across the country, is a walk-through full body disinfection chamber. It is a portable system equipped with sanitiser and soap dispenser.

The decontamination is started using a foot pedal at the entry. On entering the chamber, an electrically operated pump creates a disinfectant mist of hypo sodium chloride for disinfecting. The mist spray is calibrated for an operation of 25 seconds and stops automatically, indicating completion of operation.

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DRDO at the forefront of fighting Covid-19 - - Defence Aviation Post

Currently, there is no cure or vaccine that provides immunity against SARS-CoV-2. Scientists, however, are still on the hunt to find the best treatments for the disease, says anarticle.

Currently, the broad approaches that scientists are trying to study include antibodies, malaria drugs, and, of course, a vaccine.

Another approach being looked at by scientists is the harvesting of antibodies from the blood plasma of people who survived the illness.

However, this approach is a slow process, and there is no assurance that it can work. Also, there is a need to recruit former patients of the illness to donate plasma.

Then, the next step is to process that plasma and transform it to be used therapeutically.

According to one of the Netflix documentary 'Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak' researcher, Doctor Jacob Glanville, he believes that he had found a shortcut.

Doctor Glanville is the leader of Distributed Bio, a computational immune engineering organization that centers on creating antibody therapeutics and vaccines. For weeks, Glanville and his team had spent a lot of time on their laboratory to engineer a potential treatment for COVID-19.

On April 1, he announced through social media that their team had made a breakthrough.

He revealed that in the last nine weeks, his team had been working had to create an antibody therapy to neutralize and cure COVID-19 patients.

Antibodies are proteins produced by a person's immune system. It helps the body fight against intruders and pathogens, such as the novel coronavirus. It helps keep a person from getting sick.

According to Doctor Glanville, his team had engineered specific antibodies that are good at the task of blocking the deadly novel coronavirus.

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Answers from the Past

Doctor Glanville shared that to save time and get immediate results, he looked back at the antibodies that were proven to be effective at fighting the 2003 SARS virus.

According to Glanville, the 2003 SARS virus is related to the novel coronavirus. It is why his team studied the antibodies that bound SARS. The antibodies are known to have the ability to neutralize the SARS virus. This means that those antibodies will be useful medicine if the2003 SARS viruscame back, the doctor added.

Distributed Bio was able to locate five SARS antibodies successfully. Theseantibodieswere then modified to allow it to bind to receptors of the novel coronavirus.

According to Doctor Glanville, the 2003 SARS virus antibodies were capable of cross-neutralizing antibodies.

The concept used is that the modified antibodies can attach themselves to receptors of the novel coronavirus. This helps prevent the SARS-CoV-2 from invading and infecting healthy human cells.

The COVID-19 treatment that Doctor Glanville and his team are proposing is not a vaccine. According to a coronavirus expert Doctor Anthony Fauci, the discovery of Glanville and his team will become a "game-changer" for a virus that may make a return.

Doctor Glanville and his team's research is similar to the COVID-19 convalescent plasma, which is currently under testing status.

Tagsbioengineering, COVID-19 cure, COVID-19 Treatment, 2003 SARS Virus Antibodies

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Synthetic Antibodies: Bioengineering 2003 SARS Virus Antibodies to Provide Immunity to COVID-19 - Latin Post

The Center for Research Computings Spatial Studies Lab created a dashboard that tracks COVID-19 cases, hospital bed utilization rates and testing locations in Texas. Screenshot from coronavirusintexas.org

By Rynd Morgan 4/8/20 4:11pm

Rice officials announced that a $1 million accelerator fund will be established to support COVID-19-related research projects, according to a press release on Monday.

Rice has set a goal of $1 million for research funding, according to the Rice News article. The funding will be divided between $500,000 already allocated by the university, $500,000 raised from donors and federal support to make up for the initial university investment.

Yousif Shamoo, vice provost for research and a professor of biosciences, said the decision to undertake this research mission came directly in response to ideas from faculty, staff and students.

Shamoo said that research conducted under the fund will investigate how to end the spread of COVID-19 and how to plan for future pandemics.

Recovery means understanding how society and people will come to grips with their loss and how society may be changed, Shamoo said. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this horrible situation. We would be fools to not learn from this.

The Office of Research, the Office of the President, the Educational and Research Initiatives for Collaborative Health at Rice, the university institutes (the Ken Kennedy Institute, the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Smalley-Curl Institute) and a task force in the department of bioengineering are working together in research efforts supported by the fund, according to Shamoo.

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The department of bioengineering has organized a COVID-19 working group, co-chaired by Assistant Professor Jerzy Szablowski and Rice 360 Institute for Global Health Director Rebecca Richards-Kortum, according to the press release. The working group is one of several projects approved to access the fund.

Richards-Kortum said that the working group started in the bioengineering department, but quickly expanded into multiple groups which include colleagues from additional departments. The working groups are focused on topics such as developing diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccine strategies, locally manufacturing personal protective equipment, scientific outreach and social science outreach.

We are all trying to use our skills and resources to contribute to the pandemic where we can, especially to support our colleagues in the Texas Medical Center who are on the frontlines, Richards-Kortum said.

The Rice Data to Knowledge Lab is also working together with the Rice DataSci Club to sponsor a student competition to apply data science and computing skills and bring a deeper analysis of the spread and impact of COVID-19 in Houston. The competition is also supported by the research fund.

Cole Morgan, president of Rice DataSci Club, said that the club is currently organizing a two-week competition called COVID-19 Houston Community Projects to solve local challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with up to $5,000 in prize money for multiple groups to win.

Researchers at Rice have already been working on COVID-19-related projects prior to this announcement. The Center for Research Computings Spatial Studies Lab created a dashboard that tracks COVID-19 cases, hospital bed utilization rates and testing locations in Texas. The dashboard, one of four created by the lab so far, was a spontaneous effort that started over spring break, according to Fars el-Dahdah, director of the Humanities Research Center. Their first dashboard created for Brazil has received more than 700,000 views online, said el-Dahdah. The group has also recently published a dashboard for Harris County specifically.

Shamoo said that his office is translating the passion to do good during a time of crisis into a program that Rice can be proud of.

Even in the best of times the writing, reviewing and awarding of funding from the federal government takes months and many aspects of the COVID-19 response need action now, Shamoo said. We have talented faculty, staff and students that can do things right now that can make a difference.

[4/8/20 6:38 p.m.] This article has been corrected to reflect that the Coronavirus dashboard created by the Center for Research Computings Spatial Studies Lab was not supported by the COVID-19 accelerator fund.

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Rice announces $1 million COVID-19 research fund - The Rice Thresher