Covid Researchers Dig Deeper Into Experimental Treatments, Antibodies

Bloomberg: Merck Prepares New Trial Of Covid Drug Gained In Acquisition
Merck & Co. is preparing to launch a fresh clinical trial of an experimental Covid-19 treatment gained in a November deal after U.S. regulators said results from a small study weren’t sufficient to seek clearance. The drugmaker will start a late-stage trial of MK-7110, a therapy for severely ill Covid patients, to address the concerns brought forth by the Food and Drug Administration, said Nick Kartsonis, senior vice president of clinical research for infectious diseases and vaccines at Merck Research Laboratories. The additional work will put Merck months away from potentially filing for emergency clearance and bringing the therapy to patients. The company hopes to generate the needed data before the end of the year. (Griffin, 3/2)

Boston Globe: Local Researchers Look At Antibody Response Role In COVID-19
A new study says that one type of antibody may be driving severe COVID-19 in adults, while a different type may be driving a rare but dangerous condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) that children with COVID-19 can develop. Researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital published their results last month in Nature Medicine. “We noticed children who developed MIS-C after COVID disease or exposure had high levels of a specific type of antibody called IgG,” Dr. Lael Yonker, a pediatric pulmonologist at MGH and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement last month from the institute. (Finucane, 3/2)

Stat: CRISPR Rivals Put Patents Aside To Help In Fight Against Covid-19
In early January 2020, Feng Zhang, a gene-editing researcher at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, started getting emails written in Chinese about a newly identified coronavirus that was spreading in China. Some were from academics he had met, but he also got an unexpected one from the science officer at China’s consulate in New York City. (Isaacson, 3/3)

In other research news —

Modern Healthcare: Drug Overdose Deaths See Largest Increase At Start Of COVID-19 Pandemic
The Government Accountability Office directed the federal government to boost national efforts to curb and recover from drug misuse, adding the recommendation to its biennial list of high-risk areas vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. The largest recorded increase of drug overdose deaths occurred from May 2019 to May 2020, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noting a significant increase in overdose deaths from March to May that was likely fueled by the staggering economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the report. The GAO offered several recommendations to better address the drug misuse epidemic. (Kacik, 3/2)

CIDRAP: Study: Women Often Receive Improper UTI Antibiotic Rx
Nearly half of US women with an uncomplicated urinary tract infection (UTI) receive an inappropriate antibiotic prescription, and nearly three-quarters receive a prescription that is longer than necessary, according to a study last week in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. The study, led by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, also found that women in rural areas are more likely to receive an inappropriately long antibiotic prescription. (Dall, 3/2)

Genomeweb: NIH, Partners Commit $74.9M To New Phase Of Alzheimer's Program
The US National Institutes of Health and a coalition of private-sector partners are committing nearly $74.9 million to Alzheimer's disease research over the next five years in the newly announced second phase of the Accelerating Medicine Partnership for Alzheimer's Disease (AMP AD) program. Called AMP AD 2.0, the new version of the 10-year-old program will support technologies including single-cell profiling and computational modeling to bring precision medicine to the development of new Alzheimer's treatments, NIH said Tuesday. "AMP AD 2.0 aims to add greater precision to the molecular maps developed in the first iteration of this program," NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement. "This will identify biological targets and biomarkers to inform new therapeutic interventions for specific disease subtypes." (3/2)

Stat: Apple Watch Research Plows Ahead, Revealing The Device’s Health Potential
Apple has marketed its Watch for years as a tool to monitor and improve your health — and is working on a growing number of research projects to prove the device’s medical applications can be useful in both people’s everyday lives and in clinical contexts. (Aguilar, 3/3)

Stat: Beauty At The Micro-Scale: MIT’s 2021 Images Award Winners
Much of the world’s focus has been on health care at a global scale this year. The following images celebrate the work of researchers who have been toiling away on tinier work. The pictures are stunning visualizations of life sciences and biomedical research being conducted to find treatments and cures for cancer. (Ambrose, 3/3)