Yale Stem Cell Center Faculty Are Studying COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has mobilized investigators at Yale to pivot from their ongoing work to develop vaccines to prevent the disease, assays to detect the disease, and drugs to treat the disease. We are proud to list just a few of the remarkable scientific projects being pursued by members of the Yale Stem Cell Center in fighting against the pandemic.
From the laboratory of Sidi Chen
From the laboratory of Yung-Chi Cheng
From the laboratories of Rong Fan, Stephanie Halene, Diane Krause, Hyung Chun, and Mina Xu
Patients with hematologic malignancies have a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, determined by their underlying diseases and their treatments. The teams around Drs. Rong Fan, Stephanie Halene, Diane Krause, Hyung Chun and Mina Xu will develop and validate two novel immuno-serological assays that will be deployed to conduct longitudinal measurement of plasma markers and peripheral blood immune cells from COVID19 patients with different hematologic malignancies. They will use their plasma protein assay and single cell microchip to measure a cohort of COVID19 patients with or without hematological malignancies and healthy donors in order to identify potential molecular correlates with immune-mediated pathology and COVID19 disease severity uniquely in hematological cancer patients. These studies will extend to monitoring vaccine-induced humoral, cellular, and immunological responses in patients with hematologic malignancies to understand gaps in immune response to vaccination and how to improve upon it. The grant title: IMMUNO-SEROLOGICAL ASSAYS FOR MONITORING COVID19 IN PATIENTS WITH HEMATOLOGIC MALIGNANCIES, 1U01CA260507-01
From the laboratory of Kevan Herold
From the laboratory of Diane Krause
From the Laboratory of Haifan Lin
To discover a medicine for treating COVID-19 patients, Dr. Haifan Lin is co-leading two clinical trials with Dr. Miriam M. Treggiari, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, to treat moderate and severe COVID-19 patients with a new candidate drug that blocks the assembly and proliferation of the coronavirus. This effort, in partnership with Sound Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Seattle, WA), was approved by FDA on September 2, 2020 for Phase II clinical trials. The team is moving rapidly to initiate the trials in the Yale-New Haven Health System within the next few months.
From the laboratory of Jun Lu
From the laboratory of Richard Sutton
From the laboratory of Jean-Leon Thomas
We analyze the anatomical routes of brain invasion by SARS-CoV-2, using COVID-19 mouse models and the technique of i-DISCO+-labelling of whole head preparations combined with light sheet fluorescent microscope imaging. We are also investigating whether and how SARS-CoV-2 infection interferes with a pre-existing proteinopathy in a mouse model of Tauopathy.
We have contributed to the following study of the Iwasaki laboratory, by providing human brain tissue sections from COVID-19 deceased patients’ autopsies: Neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 in human and mouse brain. Song E, Zhang C, Israelow B, Lu-Culligan A, Prado AV, Skriabine S, Lu P, Weizman OE, Liu F, Dai Y, Szigeti-Buck K, Yasumoto Y, Wang G, Castaldi C, Heltke J, Ng E, Wheeler J, Alfajaro MM, Levavasseur E, Fontes B, Ravindra NG, Van Dijk D, Mane S, Gunel M, Ring A, Jaffar Kazmi SA, Zhang K, Wilen CB, Horvath TL, Plu I, Haik S, Thomas JL, Louvi A, Farhadian SF, Huttner A, Seilhean D, Renier N, Bilguvar K, Iwasaki A.bioRxiv. 2020 Sep 8:2020.06.25.169946. doi: 10.1101/2020.06.25.169946