CANCER GRAND CHALLENGES SCIENTISTS TURN TECH TO TACKLE COVID-19

24 April 2020

The global research community has rallied to tackled COVID-19 – and members of the Cancer Grand Challenges community are among those leading the charge. Several of our researchers have repurposed their innovative tools to help fight COVID-19:

• VirScan, an antibody-detection tool created by SPECIFICANCER Principal Investigator Stephen Elledge (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School), is being used to analyse blood samples from people who recover from COVID-19, building our understanding of how the virus affects the immune system.

• STORMing Cancer Co-Investigator Don Ingber (Wyss Institute) has rapidly reoriented the focus of an organ-on-a-chip project from pandemic influenza to the novel coronavirus. Just one way the Wyss Institute is leveraging its know-how at this time.

• STORMing Cancer Co-Investigator Garry Nolan (Stanford University) is redirecting his CODEX and IonPath systems to try and give researchers a better picture of the immune processes involved in COVID-19 infections.

These are just some examples of how our community is mobilising to address the current pandemic.

Are you working to tackle the novel coronavirus?