From The NIH: The Director’s Blog
The National Institutes of Health (@NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.
About the NIH Director
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. (@NIHDirector) was appointed the 16th Director of NIH by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate. He was sworn in on August 17, 2009. In this role, Dr. Collins oversees the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, spanning the spectrum from basic to clinical research. Here are some excerpts from the his latest blog posts with links to read in entirety.
CRISPR-Based Anti-Viral Therapy Could One Day Foil the Flu—and COVID-19
CRISPR gene-editing technology has tremendous potential for making non-heritable DNA changes that can treat or even cure a wide range of devastating disorders, from HIV to muscular dystrophy Now, a recent animal study shows that another CRISPR system—targeting viral RNA instead of human DNA—could work as an inhaled anti-viral therapeutic that can be preprogrammed to seek out and foil potentially almost any flu strain and many other respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
How can that be? Other CRISPR gene-editing systems rely on a sequence-specific guide RNA to direct a scissor-like, bacterial enzyme (Cas9) to just the right spot in the genome to cut out, replace, or repair disease-causing mutations. This new anti-viral CRISPR system also relies on guide RNA. But the guide instead directs a different bacterial enzyme, called Cas13a, to the right spot in the viral genome to bind and cleave viral RNA and stop viruses from replicating in lung cells.
Israeli Study Offers First Real-World Glimpse of COVID-19 Vaccines in Action
There are many reasons to be excited about the three COVID-19 vaccines that are now getting into arms across the United States. At the top of the list is their extremely high level of safety and protection against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Of course, those data come from clinical trials that were rigorously conducted under optimal research conditions. One might wonder how well those impressive clinical trial results will translate to the real world.
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine offers an early answer for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The Pfizer product is an mRNA vaccine that was found in a large clinical trial to be up to 95 percent effective in preventing COVID-19, leading to its Emergency Use Authorization last December.
Antibody Response Affects COVID-19 Outcomes in Kids and Adults
Doctors can’t reliably predict whether an adult newly diagnosed with COVID-19 will recover quickly or battle life-threatening complications. The same is true for children.
Thankfully, the vast majority of kids with COVID-19 don’t get sick or show only mild flu-like symptoms. But a small percentage develop a delayed, but extremely troubling, syndrome called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). This can cause severe inflammation of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, and other parts of the body, coming on weeks after recovering from COVID-19. Fortunately, most kids respond to treatment and make rapid recoveries.
