Could the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine reawaken previous antibody responses and point the way to a universal coronavirus vaccine? A new analysis of the antibody response to a COVID-19 vaccine suggests the immune system’s history with other coronaviruses, including those behind the common cold, shapes the patient’s response, according to a study published… Read more
The results of a study led by Northern Arizona University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest the immune systems of people infected with COVID-19 may rely on antibodies created during infections from earlier coronaviruses to help fight the disease.
COVID-19 isn’t humanity’s first encounter with a coronavirus, so named because… Read more
The upper left panel shows that during the month of March 2020, the decline in traffic across the US coincided with the rise in COVID-19 cases. The country responded in a uniform fashion. The lower panel shows how that correlation in traffic-COVID-19 broke down with traffic rising in most states but COVID-19 cases rising in… Read more
C. Todd French, assistant professor of biology and leader of Northern Arizona University’s new COVID-19 Testing Service Center (CTSC), is working with scientists at Vault Pharma, an emerging biotechnology company, to test candidate vaccines against the novel coronavirus. Through a multi-institutional public-private partnership linking the company with UCLA, NAU and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, French is… Read more
One of the most challenging aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the lack of testing needed to detect and trace infections—and without adequate testing, government officials do not have the data they need to make the best possible decisions in the interest of public health.
In addition to being in short supply,… Read more
With the ongoing challenges associated with large-scale testing for COVID-19—including test kit shortages, stringent testing criteria and the inherent limitations of current tracking systems on mildly symptomatic and asymptomatic populations, scientists are looking for alternate methods to boost testing in order to predict the spread of the disease. Crystal Hepp, an assistant professor in NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and… Read more