Group items tagged

"The National Institutes of Health today announced a new initiative aimed at speeding innovation, development and commercialization of COVID-19 testing technologies, a pivotal component needed to return to normal during this unprecedented global pandemic. With a $1.5 billion investment from federal stimulus funding, the newly launched Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative will infuse funding into early innovative technologies to speed development of rapid and widely accessible COVID-19 testing. At the same time, NIH will seek opportunities to move more advanced diagnostic technologies swiftly through the development pipeline toward commercialization and broad availability. NIH will work closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to advance these goals."

"So much has been reported over the past six months about testing for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that keeping up with the issue can be a real challenge. To discuss the latest progress on new technologies for SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing in the United States, I spoke recently with NIH's Dr. Bruce Tromberg, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). Not only does Bruce run a busy NIH institute, he is helping to coordinate the national response for expanded testing during the COVID-19 pandemic."

"Posted on May 5th, 2020 by Dr. Francis Collins"

"Follow this page to share information that can benefit someone you know. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) touches the lives of nearly all Americans from research to food safety, health care, aging and much more."

"AMPEL BioSolutions Co-Founder and COO/CSO, Dr. Amrie Grammer guests on BioTalk to discuss building the Company in Charlottesville, VA, her work and recognition at NIH, and being a leader from the southern part of the BioHealth Capital Region."

"David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN) and one of the youngest individuals to be appointed to the faculty at Penn Medicine, where he is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Translational Medicine & Human Genetics, Founding Director of the Center for Study & Treatment of Castleman & inflammatory Lymphadenopathies (CSTL). An NIH-funded physician-scientist, he has dedicated his life to discovering new treatments and cures for deadly disorders like idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD), which he was diagnosed with during medical school. As common as ALS and more deadly than lymphoma, iMCD involves the immune system attacking and shutting down the body's vital organs such as the liver, kidneys, bone marrow, and heart. After spending months hospitalized in critical condition, having his last rites read, and having four deadly relapses, he is now in his longest remission ever thanks to a treatment that he identified in the lab."

"The future of health begins with you The All of Us Research Program is a historic effort to gather data from one million or more people living in the United States to accelerate research and improve health. By taking into account individual differences in lifestyle, environment, and biology, researchers will uncover paths toward delivering precision medicine."

DeAunne Denmark, MD, PhD - Recommends Dr. Anthony Fauci as a highly credible source of information.

"You may think that you're looking at a telescopic heat-map of a distant planet, with clickable thumbnail images to the right featuring its unique topography. In fact, what you're looking at is a small region of the brain that's measured in micrometers and stands out as a fascinating frontier of discovery into the very origins of thought and cognition."

Recommended by Tyler Orion, Endorsed by DeAunne Denmark, MD, PhD :This is an example of the high quality and thoughtful study design needed to accurately and meaningfully interpret real-world tracking data. This prediction signal would not have been detected in the larger (inconsistently reporting) group, or in those who hadn't tracked enough before getting sick. Which relates to the importance of creating a baseline health timeline and consistently collecting robust, standardized pre-intervention contextual data. And another illustration re: why I keep circling back to these in all of our n-of-1 discussions :)

"Earlier this year, clinical trials of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines indicated that both immunizations appeared to protect for at least six months. Now, a study in the journal Nature provides some hopeful news that these mRNA vaccines may be protective even longer [1]."

"Many people who contract COVID-19 have only a mild illness, or sometimes no symptoms at all. But others develop respiratory failure that requires oxygen support or even a ventilator to help them recover [1]. It's clear that this happens more often in men than in women, as well as in people who are older or who have chronic health conditions. But why does respiratory failure also sometimes occur in people who are young and seemingly healthy? A new study suggests that part of the answer to this question may be found in the genes that each one of us carries [2]. While more research is needed to pinpoint the precise underlying genes and mechanisms responsible, a recent genome-wide association (GWAS) study, just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, finds that gene variants in two regions of the human genome are associated with severe COVID-19 and correspondingly carry a greater risk of COVID-19-related death."

"It's now clear that nearly everyone who recovers from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) produces antibodies that specifically target SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the infection. Yet many critical questions remain. A major one is: just how well do those particular antibodies neutralize the virus to fight off the infection and help someone recover from COVID-19? Fortunately, most people get better-but should the typical antibody response take the credit?"

"New findings from a study of thousands of healthcare workers in England show that those who got COVID-19 and produced antibodies against the virus are highly unlikely to become infected again, at least over the several months that the study was conducted. In the rare instances in which someone with acquired immunity for SARS-CoV-2 subsequently tested positive for the virus within a six month period, they never showed any signs of being ill."

"Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated People Less Likely to Cause 'Long COVID'"

"N-of-1 or single subject clinical trials consider an individual patient as the sole unit of observation in a study investigating the efficacy or side-effect profiles of different interventions. The ultimate goal of an n-of-1 trial is to determine the optimal or best intervention for an individual patient using objective data-driven criteria. Such trials can leverage study design and statistical techniques associated with standard population-based clinical trials, including randomization, washout and crossover periods, as well as placebo controls. Despite their obvious appeal and wide use in educational settings, n-of-1 trials have been used sparingly in medical and general clinical settings. We briefly review the history, motivation and design of n-of-1 trials and emphasize the great utility of modern wireless medical monitoring devices in their execution. We ultimately argue that n-of-1 trials demand serious attention among the health research and clinical care communities given the contemporary focus on individualized medicine. Keywords: clinical equipoise, early-phase trials, individualized medicine, n-of-1, remote phenotyping, single patient trial, treatment repositioning, wireless health"

Camille Nebeker: I'm writing a paper on mHealth and research ethics across regulated and unregulated sectors. Came across an article that you may appreciate - it's basically saying that people need to be trained when conducting scientific research. It was aimed at clinicians - not citizen scientists: