COVID-19

“Everyone leaves their ego at the door and is so upbeat, even at 4am"

Adrienne Adele Cox tells The Biologist about volunteering at one of the UK's three new 24-hour mega-labs, set up to scale up COVID-19 testing.

Why an oral vaccine could be key to fighting COVID-19

Dr Elliot Bland is helping develop a potential vaccine stable enough to post to millions of citizens as a capsule, rather than one requiring healthcare professionals and needles.

"I don't think the department has ever locked its doors to academics before in 200 years"

Biophysicist Professor Pietro Cicuta tells Tom Ireland how nearly a thousand Cambridge researchers have joined his Slack channel to develop coronavirus ideas – from ventilator prototypes to an app that diagnoses the disease from the sound of coughing.

“If all this new data isn’t understood and interpreted in context, it could lead to some really harmful public policy decisions"

US virologist Dr Angela Rasmussen talks to Tom Ireland about how COVID-19 differs to previous outbreaks she has studied, the danger of press releases and pre-prints being used as data, and the ‘incoherent’ response at the federal level.

“Our entire way of working has changed”

Immunologists Dr Elizabeth Mann and Dr Madhvi Menon are on the frontline of COVID-19 research, following the immune responses of patients arriving at hospitals across Manchester.

“It’s about being ‘about right’ now, rather than perfectly right too late”

The LSHTM's Dr Adam Kucharski describes how modelling has provided rapid insights into many aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak.

"It's almost like 'crowd-science' - which can really accelerate science"

Open Cell’s Thomas Meany on scaling up open-source COVID-19 testing assays – from a lab in a shipping-container to a dedicated space in The British Library.

"I think the UK bioscience response has been outstanding"

In just a few weeks, Professor Paul Freemont FRSB and colleagues have repurposed tools from synthetic biology research to create diagnostic platforms for NHS hospitals.

"We we are calling for donors that never tested positive for SARS-CoV-2"

Immunoengineer Dr Kaitlyn Sadtler is studying the immune response of those with little or no COVID-19 symptoms in the hope of understanding their role in the spread of the disease.

“The mobilization of our country’s scientists has been impressive”

Sophien Kamoun discusses how he has pivoted from studying plant pathogens to tracing a human pathogen at the heart of a global emergency.

"For science, this is a challenging time"

Sir Paul Nurse Hon FRSB, director of the Crick Institute, on turning Europe's largest biomedical research centre into a giant testing facility.

“The collaborative spirit is extraordinary and unprecedented”

Just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, synthetic biologist Imre Berger FRSB and colleagues finished work on synthetic vaccine platform intended for rapidly responding to infectious disease outbreaks.