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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,678

Tests That Can Tell Who Has Had the Coronavirus Are Here, With Some Limitations

This week, the U.S. government approved the first blood test in the country that will look for the antibodies produced by the body to fight the novel coronavirus. Such a test can reveal whether someone is actively infected by the virus, as well as whether they were previously infected but recovered. While these tests are very much needed to better understand the scale of the outbreak, they have a few major limitations.

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration issued an Emergency Use Authorization to a covid-19 antibody test developed by the company Cellex. The test looks for two types of antibodies, IgM and IgG, created by the body’s immune system in response to the new coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2. The test, which requires blood drawn from a vein, can return results within 15 to 20 minutes, though the testing itself has to be done in a certified laboratory, not at a doctor’s office, unlike some other rapid covid-19 tests.

‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world?

Because crises shape history, there are hundreds of thinkers who have devoted their lives to studying how they unfold. This work – what we might call the field of “crisis studies” – charts how, whenever crisis visits a given community, the fundamental reality of that community is laid bare. Who has more and who has less. Where the power lies. What people treasure and what they fear.

Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe the pandemic is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only make existing injustices worse. By .

VA struggles to fill hospital jobs; it has 49,000 openings across the country

Staffing shortages amid the 386,000 VA employees are “a root cause for many of the problems in veterans’ care,” said Inspector General Michael Missal.

There are two main reasons for the shortages — low salaries and a lack of qualified applicants, with the former leading to the latter.

Consider this item from the report: VA “medical center directors make approximately 25% of a private sector hospital chief executive officer salary yet have a greater scope of responsibility.” Top pay for a VA medical center director is $201,900.

Scientists Are Printing Living “Xenobots” out of Biological Cells

Designer Babies

Xenobots, which were first brought to life back in January, can’t reproduce. Instead, computer scientists program them in a virtual environment and then 3D print their creations out of embryonic cells.

“We are witnessing almost the birth of a new discipline of synthetic organisms,” Columbia University roboticist Hod Lipson, who was not part of the research team, told the NYT. “I don’t know if that’s robotics, or zoology or something else.”

Jeff Bezos’ space company is pressuring employees to launch a tourist rocket during the pandemic

Employees at Jeff Bezos’ aerospace firm Blue Origin are outraged that senior leadership is pressuring workers to conduct a test launch of the company’s New Shepard rocket — designed to take wealthy tourists into space — while the COVID-19 pandemic devastates the United States.

To conduct the flight, Blue Origin officials are considering transporting employees from the company’s main headquarters in Kent, Washington — a town near Seattle where COVID-19 cases have surged — to a small town in West Texas called Van Horn. The town, which has a population of just over 2,000, is home to Blue Origin’s test launch facility where the company has conducted all past flights of the New Shepard rocket.

Many employees fear that traveling to Van Horn might expose them to the novel coronavirus and inadvertently introduce COVID-19 to the residents of the rural town where there is very little infrastructure to handle an outbreak. The Verge spoke exclusively with four Blue Origin employees who all asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the company. They say they are frustrated by the company’s desire to conduct a launch, as it could unnecessarily jeopardize the health of employees at Blue Origin and residents of Van Horn.

The FDA-approved Drug Ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro

Shared by Michael Michalchik

Ivermectin is an inhibitor of the COVID-19 causative virus (SARS-CoV-2) in vitro.

• A single treatment able to effect ∼5000-fold reduction in virus at 48h in cell culture.

• Ivermectin is FDA-approved for parasitic infections, and therefore has a potential for repurposing.

• Ivermectin is widely available, due to its inclusion on the WHO model list of essential medicines.

Although several clinical trials are now underway to test possible therapies, the worldwide response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been largely limited to monitoring/containment. We report here that Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2), with a single addition to Vero-hSLAM cells 2 hours post infection with SARS-CoV-2 able to effect ∼5000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 h. Ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans.

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