$100,000 Gift Speeds Exploration of Sobetirome as COVID-19 Treatment
The Department of Internal Medicine is grateful for a generous gift of $100,000 to speed initiation of Phase II clinical trials of sobetirome, a well-characterized thyromimetic drug, as an early treatment for COVID-19. Naftali Kaminski, MD, chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine and professor of medicine, and his team are pursuing this treatment approach—one that aims to address the lung injury component of COVID-19-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) to halt disease progression. Kaminski’s team believes that sobetirome will enhance lung resilience to injury in COVID-19- induced ARDS and accelerate recovery from the virus. The team obtained an IND from the FDA and is now pursuing additional funding to run the trial.
Originally published April 16, 2020
Yale Medicine Receives Large Donation of PPE
On April 2, Yale Medicine received a large donation of personal protective equipment (PPE) from a Chinese company and a group of Yale parents. The equipment is critical to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and came at a time when these supplies were in highest demand. More than 7,750 KN95 face masks were donated by AMT Consulting in Shanghai, China, with 14,000 additional masks arriving over the next several weeks. Sixteen boxes of hazmat suits (108 sets) were donated by the Yale Chinese Parent Club. In addition, 2,000 surgical masks are being donated by Chinese employees and families at Boehringer Ingelheim, Danbury Chinese Alliance Church, and the West Connecticut Chinese Community.
After learning about Yale’s PPE shortage, Jiankan Guo, PhD, a research scientist within the Section of Nephrology, contacted Gary V. Desir, MD, the Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, to see how he could help. Guo partnered with Zhenzhen Wu, Steve Xu, Shanshan Zeng, and Jason Zhao to lead a KN95/N95 drive with more than 170 local Chinese volunteers to solicit PPE donations in both Connecticut and China. They collected over 22,000 masks from inside and outside Connecticut.
Originally published April 3, 2020
Meals4Healers Feeds Health Care Providers
Many people asked how they could support the frontline health care providers (HCPs) during the pandemic. Some HCPs were in isolation due to a possible COVID-19 exposure, illness related to COVID-19, or were displaced due to the pandemic. To show gratitude to HCPs and support local restaurants, an innovative food delivery and wellness support initiative was started in March 2020, has provided 1300 meals, and is ongoing. Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, EdD, associate research scientist (general internal medicine) spearheaded the initiative and has been working closely with the local restaurants and the Graduate Medical Education (GME) office at Yale, and has raised $35,000 in donations thus far. Two New Haven restaurants, Tavern on State and ROIA Restaurant and Cafe, were partners in this initiative.
Former Chief Resident Donates PPE
As the COVID-19 cases picked up across Connecticut, Nicole (Rabidou) Bundy, MD, a rheumatologist in Ohio, contacted a friend, Ursula Brewster, MD, associate professor of medicine (nephrology) to see how she could help. Bundy, a former Yale School of Medicine (YSM) chief resident from 2002–2003, wanted to support her former community.
“Nicole called me and let me know that she had 1000 KN95 masks to donate to Yale,” explained Brewster. “She asked that they be distributed wherever they would do the most good: the city of New Haven or at the hospital.” As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, personal protective equipment (PPE) was in short supply. The kindness of Bundy’s donation was not lost on Brewster.
“We talk about the Yale family, and we very much are that: a family,” said Brewster. “Nicole trained with many of us here. It means a lot to us that she cared so much about her former community to make this generous donation of protective gear.”
Originally published June 8, 2020
Donation of Masks to Help New Haven’s Vulnerable Populations
Many programs at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital have evolved to support the community during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Yale Cancer Disparities Firewall (CDF) project is no exception. Originally designed to address cancer disparities among minorities and people of low socioeconomic status living in New Haven, the team recently rallied to deliver face masks to local organizations to distribute to city residents.
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and chief of Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, and one of the leaders of the CDF project, collaborated with Naftali Kaminski, MD, chief of Yale-PCCSM and the Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary). Kaminski organized the donation of the masks from PCCSM. The masks will offer much-needed protection, as COVID-19 infection rates are still rising in underserved populations. Included with each mask is a fact sheet on the proper use and cleaning of cloth masks in both English and Spanish.
Beth Jones, PhD, MPH, and Sakinah Carter Suttiratana, PhD, MPH, MBA, members of the Yale School of Public Health faculty, are also co-leaders of the project, which is funded by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.
The masks were distributed to Christian Community Action, Inc. Food Pantry Program; Meals on Wheels; Coordinated Food Assistance Network (CFAN) Loaves & Fishes; Downtown Pantry; and six soup kitchens to be used by frontline staff serving food to the community and to be distributed to city residents. Jose DeJesus, Community Health Educator for Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, coordinated the pickup and distribution of the masks. The hope is that these masks will offer a layer of protection that may not have otherwise been available to underserved residents.
Originally published April 30, 2020
Donated Oximeters Help with COVID-19 Recovery at Home
The Department of Internal Medicine is grateful to have received a generous philanthropic gift of 100 wearable pulse oximeters from Norwalk resident and investment banker Anne Yang. These health monitoring devices are being distributed to selected Yale clinicians and patients who have been infected with COVID-19 and sent home or discharged to recover. Worn comfortably on one’s finger, the oximeter ring monitors the wearer’s blood oxygen level and heart rate 24 hours a day.
Yang, a Hopkins School parent, reached out to friend and fellow Hopkins parent, Naftali Kaminski, MD, to ask how she could help. Kaminski, chief of Yale-PCCSM, was at the time very concerned about the dangerous shifts in blood oxygen levels and heart rates that can develop undetected in people with COVID-19 and signal a downturn in health. He suggested that a gift of oximeter rings for infected health care workers who were staying at home to recover from the disease would be a useful, valuable tool to see whether their disease state is improving or worsening.
Yang agreed, purchased the oximeter rings, and gifted them to Yale. “I was delighted to help by donating a monitoring solution,” said Yang. “Testing is a first line of defense against COVID-19. Monitoring solutions are an important next step . . . until we have a vaccine.”
As of May 8, 20 oximeter rings had been distributed to Yale residents and nurses who had treated COVID-19 patients and were themselves recovering from the virus at home. The devices not only enable self-monitoring but are also equipped with alarms that sound automatically if measurements jump to dangerous levels. “It’s incredibly reassuring to have these monitoring devices on hand; they’re giving infected clinicians peace of mind as they recover,” Kaminski said.
Decisions about who receives the oximeters are made by a small committee that Kaminski formed. The committee will also be exploring ways to leverage the devices beyond COVID-19 disease monitoring. The committee has also established the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine Resource Fund to continue this initiative.
Originally published May 14, 2020
Gift from Ludwig Family Foundation Funds Urgent COVID Research
The Ludwig Family Foundation has made a substantial gift to support Yale’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The donation will fund the laboratories of at least six scientists on the Yale School of Medicine faculty, for work on vaccine development to prevent future outbreaks as well as treatments for people who are already infected.
“Given the time pressure to find treatments and ultimately prevent COVID-19 and the terrible loss of life and economic disruption that are damaging the well-being of individuals, families, and entire countries,” says Carol Ludwig, MD, president of the foundation, “we felt it was important to lend early support to this group of talented Yale scientists who are working tirelessly to find approaches with the potential to benefit large numbers of people.”
The gift includes funding for research led by Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology, in collaboration with Aaron M. Ring, MD, PhD, assistant professor of immunobiology, and Craig Wilen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of laboratory medicine and of immunobiology. Their combined laboratories will analyze components of the blood and immune systems of COVID-positive patients via flow cytometry and other methods. They hope to develop targeted treatment strategies; use biomarkers to predict the success of each treatment option; and determine which immune system components will help protect the patient from disease and which may exacerbate it.
Wilen’s lab is also working to identify drugs and novel targets by screening 680 FDA-approved drugs for antiviral activity, and then testing their efficacy with tests involving infectious virus. They will also analyze the human genome to identify genes that may open the door to SARS-CoV2 infection, with the hope that those genes can become targets for new therapies. They also hope to learn how the virus causes disease by using single-cell RNA sequencing to sort out the genes expressed by specific cells in the presence versus the absence of the virus.
The labs of Ring and of Andrew Wang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of internal medicine and of immunobiology, are collaborating on answering the important question of whether a patient’s cells are destroyed directly by the SARS-Co-V2 virus or by powerful elements of the infected person’s immune system that the virus triggers. That work will include defining the roles of several cell death pathways in the progression of COVID-19 disease, and the potential of making them therapeutic targets.
David A. Hafler, MD, chair and the William S. and Lois Styles Professor of Neurology, and professor of immunobiology, will work to develop immunotherapies to treat COVID-19, with a particular focus on the co-inhibitory receptor TIGIT. Hafler and colleagues have identified TIGIT as playing a central role in orchestrating T cell activation in autoimmunity, cancer, and viral expression. One of their goals is to use multi-omics single-cell analysis to explore T cell immune profiles in patients with mild and severe manifestations of COVID-19 compared with those of healthy individuals. They hope this work will also have applications to pandemic viruses that might arise in the future.
Richard Bucala, MD, PhD, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) and professor of pathology and of epidemiology (microbial diseases) and his laboratory staff hope to develop a vaccine based on an RNA replicon platform that can block transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and also limit future viral outbreaks. Bucala is particularly optimistic about this approach because it has shown promise when applied to other forms of viral infection; can be administered effectively in small doses; and can be produced rapidly in large quantities to enable mass vaccine distribution.
In addition to providing funding to these specific projects, the Ludwig Family Foundation has provided a generous gift to the COVID Research Resource Fund. This fund may be used at the discretion of Nancy J. Brown, MD, the Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Medicine and C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine, in her role leading the coordination of research activities related to COVID through CoReCT, the campuswide COVID-19 Response Coordination Team.
Originally published June 19, 2020