Funding, Deals & Partnerships: BIOLOGICS & MEDICAL DEVICES; BioMed e-Series; Medicine and Life Sciences Scientific Journal – http://PharmaceuticalIntelligence.com
Subject: Re: Mechanisms of infection by SARS-CoV-2, inflammation and potential links with the microbiome | Future Virology
Dear All,
Prof. Fitzgerald proposes that thromoboxane A2 and PGD2 receptor antagonists can serve as antithrombotic and immunomodulatory agents in COVID-19 respectively.
Ramatroban is the only dual Thromboxane A2 / TP and PGD2/DPr2 receptor antagonist. Ramatroban has an excellent safety profile having been used for allergic rhinitis in Japan for past 20 years.
Ramatroban is ideally suited for treatment of COVID-19 at all stages of the disease and all severities. FDA has allowed us to proceed with clinical trials but Bayer has declined to provide the drug.
It is tragic because children, even those with mild symptoms, exhibit microvascular thrombosis and thrombotic microangiopathy (Diorio et al, 2020). Many children have recovered from acute illness but suffering from long COVID.
By engineering a modified version of the messenger RNA (mRNA) inside human cells and then developing a system to deliver it to its target, the two researchers laid the groundwork for the vaccines brought to fruition by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
“This award celebrates how basic research in molecular biology can be the foundation for applications that can affect the lives of us all,” said James Haber, the Abraham and Etta Goodman Professor of Biology and director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center.
“Through their painstaking research into mRNA – and persistence despite setbacks – Weissman and Karikó laid the groundwork for vaccines that will save countless lives.”
Peter Gruber Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Michael Rosbash said:
“Among the few positive consequences of the current pandemic are the successful efforts made worldwide to generate effective vaccines. The most creative of these rely on the new messenger RNA technology pioneered by Kariko and Weissman. This is a great story where individual initiative in basic science has ended up having a remarkable real-world impact.”
The Rosenstiel Award has had a distinguished record of identifying and honoring scientists who subsequently have been honored with the Lasker and Nobel Prizes. Thirty-six of 93 Rosenstiel Award winners have subsequently been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology or in Chemistry.
A full list of awardees can be found on the award’s website.
The award will be presented on February 8 at 12 p.m. via webinar. Register for the event here.
Karikó and Weissman began working together over 20 years ago when both were at U Penn.
At the time, many scientists didn’t believe mRNA, which transport instructions from DNA to the ribosomes for the production of proteins, could be the basis for a vaccine. In experiments, injecting mRNA into mice caused deadly inflammation.
But Karikó and Weissman pressed on, discovering a method of altering mRNA that enabled it to enter cells without triggering the body’s immune system. They did this by tweaking one of the four nucleosides that are the building blocks of mRNA.
Several years later, Karikó and Weissman devised a method of packaging mRNA inside a lipid nanoparticle — a small bubble of oil — so that the molecule didn’t fall apart as it traveled through the body.
“We basically tested every possible delivery system and found this was the best,” Weissman recently told BrandeisNOW.
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work by spurring human cells to produce the spike-shaped protein found on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the illness, and triggering the immune system to produce protective antibodies.
In general, mRNA vaccines have the advantage of being cheaper to produce than traditional vaccines for chickenpox, polio, flu or rabies. It’s also hoped they can be adapted to treat other infectious diseases such as genital herpes (which is caused by the herpes simplex virus), influenza, Zika and HIV.
“The COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough is a great example of how basic science innovations, such as the RNA technology pioneered by Weissman and Karikó, can have an enormous impact on advances in the biomedical sciences,” said biochemist Carol Fierke, the university’s new provost and executive vice president.
In addition to her post at BioNTech, Karikó is an adjunct associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Weissman is also director of vaccine research at the Perelman school’s division of infectious diseases.
Subject: Your webinar recording: Beyond COVID-19 – Discussion of survey results
Hi Aviva Lev-Ari,
Thank you for signing up to the webinar last week with me and Susan Garfield from EY on ‘Beyond COVID – Life Sciences Reimagined’.You can access the recording here.
If you still haven’t downloaded the report (with all the survey data), you can do so here. And feel free to share with your teams.
Also, I recommend if you haven’t done so already, checking out a couple of the other webinars I did with EY this year as follows:
What’s more, Reuters Events will be discussing these topics in more depth in 2021 at the Pharma USA Conference (formerly eyeforpharma Philadelphia) and if you want to be the first to see the agenda and speaker line up, you can pre-order the Info Pack here.
I hope you enjoyed the webinar and I look forward to “seeing you” again in 2021!
Kind regards,
Izzy
Izzy Gladstone
Head of Marketing Pharma & Healthcare Reuters Events
11/30/2020
REPORT: Beyond COVID-19 – Life sciences reimagined
Reporter: Gail S. Thornton, M.A.
by Susan Garfield, US Consulting Principal and Life Sciences Sector Commercial Leader, EY; Blair Gottscho, Managing Director, Reuters Events Pharma
This new report explores the findings of the biggest survey conducted in North America into pharma’s operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing the results with pharma leaders to help establish a framework for more patient-focused, sustainable care delivery.
The aim is to help you navigate the uncertain landscape ahead, with proposed three-pronged approach – Today, Tomorrow and The Road Ahead.
As our survey of more than 550 senior life sciences leaders in the US makes clear, the pandemic has forced the life sciences industry to adapt
almost overnight to a new way of working.
Commercial and Medical Affairs teams have had to fundamentally rethink not only how they engage with HCPs and patients, but also how to maintain momentum for products being launched at a time of decreased access. Patient engagement teams find themselves rushing to serve unmet patient needs remotely. R&D folk, meanwhile, are trying to work out what the pandemic and post-pandemic impacts will be on trials.
It is clear that a range of technologies have, or soon will, become a central part of the adjustment to these new realities. Life sciences businesses will need to adapt to the rapid adoption of telemedicine and near-home care. Their commercial approach will become more digitally weighted in a future where face time with doctors will be far more limited. They will also need to harness ways both to engage digitally and to adapt to the accelerated adoption of technologies such as wearables.
While almost every pharma business was already somewhere on this innovation and transformation journey, the imperative to adapt is now urgent.
The challenge is to exploit these new circumstances to capture the considerable opportunities to help HCPs drive better outcomes and save them time and stress in the process; to engage with them more meaningfully and effectively; and to build on any lessons in clinical innovation arising from the race to develop vaccines for COVID-19.
This process of adaptation has already begun. Life sciences companies are increasing investments en-masse into digital customer engagement (84% are increasing investments here) and in the technology to support this, such as data and analytics capabilities (79% are investing more). Well over half (58%) are also investing more in patient engagement.
New research from Amit Kaushal, Curt Langlotz, and Russ Altman shows most algorithms used in clinical applications train on datasets from patients in only three regions of the U.S.
COVID is accelerating the demand for automation that is smaller, simpler, and easier to move from one job to another, says Digital Economy Lab Director Erik Brynjolfsson and Digital Fellow Matt Beane.
Policymakers responsible for regulating AI have a lack of quality information on what it is and how we should measure it. A recent HAI workshop examined these challenges.
A panel of UC Berkeley biologists explores diverse approaches to understanding the SARS-CoV2 virus, including its ecology and evolution, mechanisms of infection, and potential therapeutic targets. Jeffery Cox, Faculty Director, Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases, moderator Bio: http://cend.globalhealth.berkeley.edu… Diana Bautista, Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Bio: https://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/cdb/… Mike Boots, Professor of Integrative Biology Bio: https://ib.berkeley.edu/people/facult… James Hurley, Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology Bio: https://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/bbs/…
UPDATED on 8/30/2020
Top Panel of COVID Specialist Physicians on September 6, 2020 11AM EST.
Moderator: Rabbi Michelle Robinson, Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Dr. Rochelle Walensky:Dr. Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a practicing Infectious Disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Mark Poznansky: Mark Poznansky, MD, PhD, is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, an attending physician in infectious diseases medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Director of the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center at MGH.
Dr. Camille Kotton: Dr. Camille Nelson Kotton MD, FIDSA, FAST is the Clinical Director of Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases in the Infectious Diseases Division at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been caring for patients with COVID-19, developing clinical protocols, and contributing to several COVID-19 clinical trials. She has also been working to safely help open local Jewish day schools during the pandemic.
Dr. Darrell Kotton: Darrell Kotton, MD, is the founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University and Boston Medical Center, the David C. Seldin Professor in the Department of Medicine and in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, and a practicing Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine physician at Boston Medical Center.
Topics will include what doctors are coming to understand about Covid-19, what steps we can take to stay healthy and if sick, avoid hospitalization. We will also talk about possible testing and treatment options emerging now and how long the doctors expect our world will be living with Covid-19.
Subject: Re: A new perspective for mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 infection: priming the innate immune system for viral attack | Open Biology
I consider this an important contribution to the current thinking about SARS-COV2. I think that we are at least 9 months from a potential vaccine for Covid. I don’t know the significance of the second Covid infection just reported. My greater concern is a widespread rejection of vaccinations by many without sound reason. It is now close to an upcoming flu season and many will be vaccinated. This should provide an opportunity to test the proposed idea.
Sincerely,
Larry Bernstein
A new perspective for mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 infection: priming the innate immune system for viral attack
The course of infection by SARS-CoV-2 frequently includes a long asymptomatic period, followed in some individuals by an immune dysregulation period that may lead to complications and immunopathology-induced death. This course of disease suggests that the virus often evades detection by the innate immune system. We suggest a novel therapeutic approach to mitigate the infection’s severity, probability of complications and duration. We propose that priming an individual’s innate immune system for viral attack shortly before it is expected to occur may allow pre-activation of the preferable trajectory of immune response, leading to early detection of the virus. Priming can be carried out, for example, by administering a standard vaccine or another reagent that elicits a broad anti-viral innate immune response. By the time that the expected SARS-CoV-2 infection occurs, activation cascades will have been put in motion and levels of immune factors needed to combat the infection will have been elevated. The infection would thus be cleared faster and with less complication than otherwise, alleviating adverse clinical outcomes at the individual level. Moreover, priming may also mitigate population-level risk by reducing need for hospitalizations and decreasing the infectious period of individuals, thus slowing the spread and reducing the impact of the epidemic. In view of the latter consideration, our proposal may have a significant epidemiological impact even if applied primarily to low-risk individuals, such as young adults, who often show mild symptoms or none, by shortening the period during which they unknowingly infect others. The proposed view is, at this time, an unproven hypothesis. Although supported by robust bio-medical reasoning and multiple lines of evidence, carefully designed clinical trials are necessary.
Disclaimer
This article is intended to stimulate discussion and further research. Priming one’s immune system for mitigation of COVID-19 is currently not advised.
Yaakov “Koby” Nahmias is an ERC-funded biomedical engineer and entrepreneur. He is the founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a faculty member at Center for Engineering in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Nahmias work is focused on the integration of tissue engineering, microfluidics, and metabolism.
The COVID-19 pandemic has called attention to deep-rooted racial and ethnic inequities and disparities that are causing communities of color to be impacted by the virus at a much higher rate than their White counterparts. A recent live virtual course took an in-depth look at the scope of the problem and explored an array of strategies to help level the playing field. Continue Reading
What will re-opening schools look like this academic year? Is it safe? Hear different perspectives from health care providers in this Thursday’s webinar.
Improve your ability to optimize health care quality and safety, maintain excellence in health care service and patient care—and lead your health care teams, projects and organization to success. Application available until September 2, 2020. Apply Now
Health care delivery services have been transformed by advances in health technology, and technology-based health care seems to be gaining ground. Although much of this accelerated adoption has been linked to the coronavirus pandemic, experts are projecting a further increase in telehealth service adoption post-COVID-19.
“This is the first phase 3 trial that will test the effectiveness of a vaccine against COVID-19, and we’ve been working diligently across industry, academia and government to pave a path for launching this trial rapidly and safely,” said Lindsey Baden, HMS associate professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s. She is the co-principal investigator for the phase 3 COVE study evaluating a candidate vaccine for preventing COVID-19. Learn More
During this transitional time, it is more important than ever that we stay connected and provide Mass General friends and supporters with the resources needed to combat COVID-19. This seminar features Ann L. Prestipino, MPH, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Clinical Operations, Mass General and The Mass General Physicians Organization; Maurizio Fava, MD, Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Department of Psychiatry, Mass General, Director, Division of Clinical Research, Mass General Research Institute; Pradeep Natarajan, MD, MMSc, Director, Preventive Cardiology, Mass General; and Jonathan Rosand, MD, Vascular Neurologist, Mass General, Managing Co-Director, Mass General Neuroscience.
Former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation John Seely Brown is interviewed by instructor Ernestine Fu. The two discuss entering a new era of globalization with technological, economic, and sociological change. Topics include how society will change due to new emerging technologies, navigating a white water world, adapting to disruption, understanding national state powers and global implications — particularly as society is facing the COVID-19 pandemic. John Seely Brown has held several positions and roles: Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation, Director of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), Co-Chairman of the Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, Co-founder of the Institute for Research on Learning, and Advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California. He has served on the boards of Amazon, Corning, Polycom, In-Q-Tel, and the MacArthur Foundation. Course Description: The next wave of technological innovation and globalization will affect our countries, our societies, and ourselves. In the next economy, we will see a fusion of technologies and research that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. We will see extraordinary technology advances that are commensurate with those of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions. These earlier industrial revolutions introduced the use of steam power to mechanize production, development of groundbreaking inventions in transportation, telecommunications, and manufacturing, as well as more recently, the introduction of the digital era. As the next revolution is transforming humanity, MED/CEE 214: Frontier Technology explores the development and application of key emerging technologies in society: AI/ML; Smart Cities and Urban Mobility; Advanced Life Sciences; Telecommunications with 5G; and Data Privacy, Ethics, and Policy.
Learn about developing new diagnostic tests for COVID19: technological innovation in times of crisis with Hebrew University’s Dr. Naomi Habib. Dr. Habib is an Assistant Professor at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University and the Goren-Kasam Lecturer in Brain Sciences. Dr. Habib studies ageing related pathologies in the brain, combining the fields of neuroscience, computational biology, genomics and molecular biology.
– president of New England Complex Systems Institute – MIT-trained physicist and complexity scientist – has warned about global pandemics for 15 years – contributed outbreak response protocols for stopping Ebola in Africa in 2014, which worked
Speakers from Sheeba and EarlySense presented the new concept of telemedicine/touch free medicine combining UniperCare technology for communication, EarlySense for monitoring and Tytocare for touch free taking vital signs and routine physician checking, as anew concept for touch-free medicine and home hospitalization.
They presented an ecosystem for digital health being built in Israel around Touch Free Medicine.
Avi Schroeder presented his nanotech and viral research lab as the spearhead of viral and COVID -19 effort to hack the Covid-19 virus and ARDS.
Commentary:
What was missing in this evening is the mere fact that in an up to 2km range still within the same city and its hospitals and laboratories a world class knowledge center of ARDS is being formed, either collaboratively or non-collaboratively. Haifa companies and research groups are working with the top Israeli and international hospitals and companies to tackle on ARDS, the main cause of Death in the COVID-19 pandemics. As an example:
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Sunday has cleared NeuroRx, a US-Israeli pharmaceutical company, and Relief Therapeutics, a Swiss drug development company, for phase two trials for a drug that could take on a deadly condition associated with COVID-19. Startup nation finder reports the company as a Haifa Matam based company.”
“A team of researchers from Israeli research university Technion Israel Institute of Technology led by Josué Sznitman have developed a new technology they say could dramatically improve the efficacy of existing drugs for treating Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which is the leading cause of mortality in coronavirus (Covid-19) patients, the Technion announced Monday.”
“A regenerative medicine company based in Haifa, Israel, says its placenta-based cell therapy product could be used to treat hundreds of patients who are suffering from respiratory and inflammatory complications associated with the COVID-19 coronavirus.”
Pluristem and Bonus Biogroup will rival Mesoblast, a well funded company just starting clinical, dozen patients treated. Not from Haifa
This may only be the tip of the Haifa iceberg…
Disclosure:
** Dr. Ofer Markman is from Haifa Israel, has a vast interest in the success of the Haifa ecosystem, as well as the Technion, each and every one of the research groups, as well as any of the companies mentioned.
“New COVID-19 Test Identifies Asymptomatic Carriers”
(Updated May 4) On March 12, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz announced the BGU COVID-19 Response Effort to harness the University’s vast brain power, research skills and ingenuity to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Prof. Daniel Chamovitz
“It is our moral obligation to contribute to coping with this pandemic,” Prof. Chamovitz said, urging BGU researchers to join the task force.
Prof. Chamovitz stated that the University would devote resources to bring the most promising projects to fruition.
“Since the outbreak of this coronavirus, it has become an international crisis that affects individuals, families, communities, and countries around the world,” Prof. Chamovitz said. “I am turning to you, our researchers, to make the coronavirus crisis and its repercussions your top priority, to be creative and practical in order to achieve significant contributions to the national and international challenges that stand before us.”
To date, some 70 projects are underway. Among them are:
A 5-minute diagnostic test for people to take at home
A test to identify asymptomatic carriers
Self-sterilizing reusable face masks
Support for the elderly and other vulnerable populations
A prototype of the self-sterilizing air filter mask designed by BGU’s Dr. Chris Arnusch
As everyday life around the world has been affected, the effects of coronavirus extend beyond the search for a vaccine. In addition to the University’s virologists, BGU scientists and students are addressing the public health, public policy, engineering, information systems, economic, psychological, technological, tourism, and educational challenges.
Prof. Angel Porgador, deputy vice president for research and development and head of the BGU COVID-19 Response Effort; Dr. Roi Gazit, Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics; and Avishay Edri, a Ph.D. student in the Shraga Segal department who initiated the volunteer testing project
Additionally, during the height of the crisis in Israel, more than 100 BGU scientists and graduate students volunteered to increase blood sample testing for COVID-19 at the Clinical Virology Lab at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva.
AABGU Provides Financial Assistance
The BGU COVID-19 Response Effort requires financial support, and American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) immediately launched a campaign to enable BGU to participate fully in the world’s efforts at mitigation and containment.
“We support Prof. Chamovitz’s call to BGU scientists to pivot and put their efforts into fighting the medical and socio-economic consequences of this global pandemic,” said Doug Seserman, chief executive officer of AABGU.
1) We are experts in vaccine research for infectious diseases.
HU scientists experienced with related viruses such as SARS and MERS are designing potential COVID-19 vaccines and have already started producing the necessary proteins for vaccine development.
2) A multi-disciplinary approach.
At HU, teams of leading computational scientists, virologists, and clinicians are working together to generate innovative ideas, with high potential for patient implementation. These scientists are developing unique approaches to block coronavirus proliferation.
3) We are developing rapid screening – 100 to 1,000 times faster than today’s tests.
Using materials commonly found in diagnostic labs, HU researchers devised a faster and cheaper COVID-19 screening test, matching the existing standard method for accuracy and significantly surpassing it in volume. HU’s protocol has been posted to open forums online so that the global community can implement the methodology around the world.
Takuo Aoyagi, a Japanese engineer whose pioneering work in the 1970s led to the modern pulse oximeter, a lifesaving device that clips on a finger and shows the level of oxygen in the blood and that has become a critical tool in the fight against the novel coronavirus, died on April 18 in Tokyo. He was 84.
His death, in a hospital, was announced by his employer, Nihon Khoden, a Tokyo-based company that makes medical equipment. A niece, Kyoko Aoyagi, confirmed the death but said she did not know the cause.
In the 1930s and 1940s, photo cells permitted German, English, and American physiologists to construct ear oximeters with red and infrared light, requiring calibration. In 1940 Squire recognized that changes of red and infrared light transmission caused by pneumatic tissue compression permitted saturation to be computed. In 1949 Wood used this idea to compute absolute saturation continuously from the ratios of optical density changes with pressure in an ear oximeter. In 1972 Takuo Aoyagi, an electrical engineer at Nihon Kohden company in Tokyo, was interested in measuring cardiac output noninvasively by the dye dilution method using a commercially available ear oximeter. He balanced the red and infrared signals to cancel the pulse noise which prevented measuring the dye washout accurately. He discovered that changes of oxygen saturation voided his pulse cancellation. He then realized that these pulsatile changes could be used to compute saturation from the ratio of ratios of pulse changes in the red and infrared. His ideas, equations and instrument were adapted, improved and successfully marketed by Minolta about 1978, stimulating other firms to further improve and market pulse oximeters worldwide in the mid 1980s. Dr. Aoyagi and associates provided a detailed history for this paper.
This special late-breaking session on COVID-19 will provide the audience with deeper insights into the latest developments in the COVID-19 response. A diverse panel will speak to the whole experience on dealing with this pandemic—from US to international, to the state of diagnostic, treatment and vaccine development, to the importance of communication. The session will be chaired by NAM President Victor Dzau; panelists will provide their own perspective and experience on dealing with this pandemic and include:
Jeremy Farrar, Director, Wellcome Trust (confirmed)
Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (accepted, schedule permitting)
Sanjay Gupta, Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN (confirmed)
George F. Gao, Director-General, Chinese Center for Disease Control & Prevention (confirmed)
Susan R. Weiss, Professor of Microbiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (confirmed)
Richard J. Hatchett, CEO, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (confirmed)
The Academy’s 157th Annual Meeting will take place online from Saturday, April 25 through Monday, April 27, 2020. Sessions on Saturday and Sunday will be open to the public, and we invite you to join us online for webcasts that will cover a wide range of topics presented by leading US researchers and other experts.
Click the images below to learn more about each session and to view webcasts.
12:45 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EDT (9:45 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PDT) Carl Zimmer, author of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity, shared his perspective on the evolving nature of the scientific understanding of heredity across the centuries. (Webcast)
2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. EDT (11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT) This late-breaking session on the COVID-19 pandemic provided deeper insights into the latest developments. A diverse panel led by NAM President Victor Dzau spoke to the whole experience of dealing with this pandemic – from U.S. to international; to the state of diagnostic, treatment, and vaccine development; to the importance of communication. (Webcast)
1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT (10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PDT) This symposium will explore the potential benefits that might accrue, and pitfalls to be avoided, should the NAS develop a set of Grand Challenges in Science – a checklist of future civilization-shaping scientific questions to inspire the next generation of students. (Webcast)
Vale: Mark Steiner (1942-2020) – died of COVID-19 on April 6, 2020 in Jerusalem.
Image Source: Courtesy of Hebrew University
Locked down in our homes, like so many around the world, we, in Jerusalem, and elsewhere in the philosophical community, are mourning the loss of a beloved colleague, teacher, friend, and an outstanding philosopher of science and mathematics. Mark Steiner, Professor of Philosophy at the Philosophy Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, passed away on Monday, the sixth of April after a relatively short struggle with the Coronavirus. A week earlier he was still preparing his classes on David Hume (via Zoom) and pursuing his work on Maimonides, work that continued to occupy him even during his first days in hospital. That his intense intellectual activity continued almost to the very end is perhaps some consolation, but at the same time it intensifies the feeling of loss and untimeliness.
Mark Steiner was a wonderful person, cheerful and optimistic, outspoken in his critique, but immensely generous in his evaluation of colleagues’ and students’ work. A loving spouse and devoted father, he was sensitive to the demands of student’s personal lives, in particular the demands of motherhood. He not only believed in gender equality, he practiced it. His terrific sense of humour made his profound classes and talks extraordinarily witty and amusing.
Born in New York City, Steiner graduated from Columbia College in 1965 (Summa cum Laude) and gained his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1972. His teachers in Columbia, among them Isaac Levi, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Charles Parsons became lifelong correspondents and friends, as did his Princeton Dissertation Director, Paul Benacerraf. He held several prestigious fellowships and grants, including a Fulbright Fellowship in Oxford in 1965-66, a Dibner Fellowship at MIT in 1997-8, and grants from the National Science Foundation and the Israel Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was associate Professor at Columbia University until 1977, when he moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, his home university ever since. Here he became Full Professor, Chair of the philosophy department (1989-1996) and, in the last decade, Editor of Iyyun, The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly. Of the numerous talks he gave at conferences and lecture tours in distinguished universities throughout the world, Steiner was especially proud of the connection he established with Chinese philosophers. In 2013, he gave a two months graduate seminar on Wittgenstein at the Sun Yat-Sen University and on other occasions he delivered talks in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou
In addition to the many papers he published in leading philosophical periodicals and collections, Steiner authored two influential books, Mathematical Knowledge (Cornell University Press, 1975) and The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (Harvard University Press, 1998). He translated three volumes from the Yiddish (adding notes an introduction): Faith and Heresy, Principles of Philosophy, and Ancient Greek Philosophy, all by Reuven Agushewitz (published by Yeshiva University Press, 2006, 2008, 2010 respectively). He is the Academic Editor of a translation into Hebrew of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, to which he wrote an extensive interpretive essay as introduction (translation by Iftach Brill, Shalem Press, 2013). In what follows, I will try to provide a brief survey of some of Steiner’s major contributions to philosophy.
Making the assumption that ‘most people know some mathematical truths, and some people know many’, Mathematical Knowledge raises the question of how that knowledge is acquired, how mathematical truths come to be known. Although in this form, the question has been mostly ignored, Steiner maintains that answers (purported answers) could be extracted from some of the central positions in the philosophy of mathematics. If these purported answers turn out to be unsatisfactory, or worse, if a philosophical position implies that mathematical knowledge is impossible, that would count, according to Steiner, against the position in question. The book consists in an in depth examination of logicism, formalism and Platonism from the perspective of their replies to the question regarding the acquisition of mathematical knowledge. The examination casts Platonism in a more favorable light than either logicism or formalism, but even Platonism, Steiner argues, is hard pressed when faced with the challenge of providing an epistemology for mathematics. Ontologically, Platonism is driven by an analogy between the concrete material world and the abstract realm of mathematics. But whereas the typical answer to the question of how we come to know the material world invoke perception, it is not clear that there is an analogue of perception that can play the same role in the mathematical realm. Epistemically, then, the analogy may break down. (This worry is the focus of Benacerraf’s ‘What Numbers Could not Be’, Philosophical Review 74, 47-73). Seeking to retain the analogy, Steiner concludes with a (cautious) defence of mathematical intuition. Like perception, intuition is not infallible, and does not provide conclusive justification, but acknowledging its existence throws light on how mathematicians (and sometimes ordinary people) come to ’see’ mathematical truths.
Steiner’s commitment to mathematical truth and mathematical knowledge sets him apart from positions that construe mathematics as formal, contentless or conventional, and more generally from positions that drive a wedge between mathematics and the empirical sciences. Indeed, like Quine and Putnam, Steiner views mathematics as continuous with these sciences. ‘Mathematics is a science, whose methods differ little, in principle, from those of other sciences. …Mathematics can be distinguished from the other sciences only by its subject matter–not on the grounds that it has none’ (mk, p. 21). Further, he is sympathetic to the indispensability argument according to which mathematics is part and parcel of science and is therefore justified in the very same way that scientific theories are justified, that is, by the truth of the observation sentences these theories imply. It would seem that this account of mathematics provides a different answer to the question of how we come to know mathematical truths than that reached at the end of Mathematical Knowledge, for we could say that the acquisition of mathematical knowledge is no different than the acquisition of scientific knowledge. Steiner distinguishes, however, between justification and acquisition. While it may be true that the indispensability argument is relevant to the justification of mathematical truths, it does not provide an answer to the question of how we come to know them.
Interestingly, Steiner’s understanding of mathematics as a science, on a par with other sciences, led him (towards the end of Mathematical Knowledge) to dismiss the problem of the applicability of mathematics: ‘Only a pseudoproblem, therefore, lurks in the ‘applicability’ of mathematics to the world’ (mk, p. 129). As it turned out, Steiner could not leave it at that. His efforts to come to grips with the allegedly ‘pseudo’ problem culminated is another book – The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem. It’s not (I guess) that Steiner thought he was completely wrong. Rather, he realised that there are several different problems going by the same name and that philosophical work is required to distinguish between them and sieve out the ones that had been solved from those that are still pending. Thus, Steiner argues, two of the problems often referred to as problems of the applicability of mathematics–the semantic problem (of how the deduction from arithmetical theorems to their applications works) and the metaphysical problem (pointing to the ontological gap between mathematics and the world) – had already been solved by Frege. In both cases, the crux of the matter is that for Frege numerals are second-order predicates and the laws of arithmetic are second-order laws which apply to concepts. The concepts, in turn, are applicable to the physical world.
It is the unsolved problem of the applicability of mathematics, however, that occupies Steiner in this book and it is his response to this problem that makes this work so daring and original. The problem can be divided into two: First, how exactly is mathematics applied; in what ways does it underpin physical theory? Second, what makes this kind of application work? Steiner takes it to be an empirical fact that physicists describe the world in mathematical language and argues that in so doing they base themselves on mathematical analogies. Mathematical analogies, he maintains, have become crucial for physics with the exploration of the atomic and subatomic world. For it then became evident that as far as its physical laws are concerned, the new terrain is fundamentally different from the old and that in exploring it physical analogies would be of no avail. Mathematical analogies use laws that cannot be couched in nonmathematical terms, laws that prima facie have no nonmathematical meaning. Moreover, in some cases, the analogies used in modern physics are completely formal, that is, they are based on the notation of the theories in question, not on their contents. Steiner substantiates these claims in great detail by analysing the development of quantum mechanics, quantum chromodynamics, and gauge theory. The abundance of examples leads Steiner to claim that it is the overall strategy that we should ponder, not its individual instances.
Why should this strategy work? As the title of the book indicates, grasping the depth of the question is no less important than answering it. According to Steiner, mathematics is anthropocentric! It is guided and defined by human criteria of beauty and convenience, attributes to which the world ‘out there’ is supposedly utterly indifferent. On this account of mathematics the success of mathematical physics is indeed mind boggling. Why should the world accommodate our idiosyncrasies? Mainstream philosophy of science is naturalistic, that is, it denies homo sapience a privileged standing in the universe. Giordano Bruno, Copernicus and Darwin, we are told, heralded the naturalistic message and modern astronomy and cosmology further confirm it. Steiner, however, begs to differ. The universe, he believes ‘is (or rather: appears to be) an intellectually “user friendly” universe, a universe which allows our species to discover things about it’ (p. 8). The applicability of mathematics thus provides strikingly new support for Divine grace. Hence, also, ‘the importance of the enterprise of scientific inquiry from a religious point of view’ (ibid.).
Let me now say a few words about some of Steiner’s philosophical papers. In the years following the publication of Mathematical Knowledge, Steiner turned his attention from the notion of knowledge to the notion of explanation. Noting that mathematical proofs, even when equally valid, can vary dramatically in explanatory force, he sought to find out what it is that makes a proof explanatory. Having shown that simple answers such as generality and abstractness won’t work, he proposed that ‘an explanatory proof makes reference to a characterising property of an entity or structure mentioned in the theorem, such that from the proof it is evident that the result depends on the property’ (‘Mathematical Explanation,’ Philosophical Studies, 34, p. 143). To support this claim Steiner goes over various proofs in different areas of mathematics, the most familiar of which is perhaps the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem based on the characteristic property of the right triangle–its decomposability into two triangles similar to each other and to the whole. While there are other proofs of the theorem, none of them passes Steiner’s test for explanatory import. This paper has spawned an ever growing literature about mathematical explanation itself and about the relation of mathematical explanation to scientific explanation, (For more on these developments, see Paulo Mancosu’s entry ‘Explanation in Mathematics’ in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
In ‘Mathematical Realism’ (Noûs 17, 1983, pp. 363-385) Steiner addresses the question of realism in mathematics, comparing it with the question of scientific realism. In both areas, he contends, the key is independence. If the same physical term (property, quantity) plays an essential role in two independent theories, there is good reason to see the entity referred to by this term as real. And similarly for mathematics. The number π is a salient example: its independent appearance in two different areas of mathematics, geometry and in analysis, attests, according to Steiner, to its reality. From early on, Steiner was intrigued by Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics. Though critical of several of Wittgenstein’s ideas, Steiner was attracted to the view that mathematical rules develop out of empirical generalisations ‘hardened’ into fixed rules. Steiner expounded this position both as a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of mathematics and as a viable understanding of mathematics, one that ties mathematics to the empirical world.
Steiner had a long-standing interest in Jewish philosophy. His earliest work was on non-canonical figures like R. Israel Salanter (1810-1883), the founder of the Musar movement, in whose writing he identified a novel version of virtue ethics. As part of his impressive knowledge of rabbinics which he pursued throughout his life, Steiner was also an accomplished scholar of Maimonides’ halakhic, or legal, writings. But in the last decade Steiner ‘discovered’, as he put it, Maimonides the philosopher and his Guide of the Perplexed and over the last three years was deeply engaged in its study. He was especially interested in Maimonides’ metaphysics (e.g., his conception of God, divine unity and incorporeality, and the nature of divine knowledge), its ramifications for idolatry and freedom of action, and the relation between the philosophical views put forth in the Guide and in Maimonides’ legal code, the Mishneh Torah. He also explored uncanny parallels between Hume’s physics in the Treatise and the physical theory of the Kalam as presented by Maimonides and implications for our understanding of possibility and imaginability (including contemporary work on this topic by, e.g., Charles Parsons. At the time of his untimely passing, he was deeply engaged in exploring Maimonides’ acquaintance with the great Islamic critic of the falasifa (Aristotelian philosophers), Al-Ghazali. Although their relation is a topic of current live debate, Steiner was focusing on surprisingly unexplored sources for Maimonides’ arguments concerning creation, causation, and immortality. And philosopher that he was, Steiner, unlike most other contemporary Maimonides scholars, was most interested not in what Maimonides believed, but in whether he had the arguments that would justify his claims. Three papers on these subjects have been published in the last three years; additional manuscripts will hopefully be prepared for publication in the near future.
Writing these notes was a painful experience, but at the same time it had a therapeutic effect in giving me the illusion of being able to continue the conversation, a conversation that went on for several decades and ended, traumatically for me, when Mark called from hospital but could no longer talk.
Yemima Ben-Menahem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
I am grateful to Carl Posy for reading these notes and correcting a number of infelicities and to Josef Stern for writing the section on Steiner’s engagement with Jewish Philosophy
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Good News for Applicants with COVID-19 Related Inventions
Good news for inventors and patent applicants with COVID-19 related inventions: The Israel Patent Office has just released a notice saying that anyone with an invention for diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of COVID-19 can request accelerated examination of their patent application using the “Green Application” protocol and will benefit from examination starting within 3 months of approval of the request. Filing the request with the Israel Patent Office is free of charge, and JMB Davis Ben-David will also file the request free of charge. The request is submitted by simply filing a letter explaining the connection between the invention described in the patent application and COVID-19.
Who Can Apply? This is an excellent opportunity for applicants the world over to benefit from a quick procedure for searching and – potentially – allowance of their Israel patent application.
Useful for Getting on the PPH If the applicant is interested in worldwide patent coverage in jurisdictions outside of Israel, this procedure can be used to obtain a quick allowance in Israel, and the PPH (“Patent Prosecution Highway”) may then be used in many other jurisdictions to obtain corresponding patents quickly in other jurisdictions.
If you have a COVID-19 related invention or patent application, let us know, and we’ll be happy to help!
Dr. Fauci was appointed Director of NIAID in 1984. He oversees an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat established infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria as well as emerging diseases such as Ebola and Zika. NIAID also supports research on transplantation and immune-related illnesses, including autoimmune disorders, asthma and allergies. The NIAID budget for fiscal year 2020 is an estimated $5.9 billion.
Dr. Fauci has advised six Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many other domestic and global health issues. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
The American Association of Immunologists Oral History Project Transcript Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. December 9, 2015 Bethesda, MD Interview conducted by Brien Williams, Ph.D.
This is an interview with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), in his office at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, on March 7, 1989. The interviewer is Dr. Victoria Harden, Director of the NIH Historical Office.
SHE DISCOVERED CORONAVIRUSES DECADES AGO—BUT GOT LITTLE RECOGNITION
Scientific pioneer June Almeida is finally being acknowledged for virology breakthroughs she made a half century ago.
BY SYDNEY COMBS
PUBLISHED
When June Almeida peered into her electron microscope in 1964, she saw a round, grey dot covered in tiny spokes. She and her colleagues noted that the pegs formed a halo around the virus—much like the sun’s corona.
What she saw would become known as the coronavirus, and Almeida played a pivotal role in identifying it. That feat was all the more remarkable because the 34-year-old scientist never completed her formal education.
Born June Hart, she lived with her family in a tenement building in Glasgow, Scotland, where her father worked a bus driver. June was a bright student with ambitions to attend university, but money was scarce. At 16, she dropped out of school and started working as a lab technician at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where she used microscopes to help analyze tissue samples.
Four coronaviruses seen through an electron microscope. The spokes around the edge reminded researchers of a halo, which inspired its name corona, or crown in Latin.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BSIP, UIG/GETTY
After moving to a similar job at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, she met the man who would become her husband, Venezuelan artist Enriques Almeida. The pair immigrated to Canada, and June got a job working with electron microscopes at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto. There she developed new techniques and published several papers describing the structures of viruses previously unseen.
New way of seeing the microscopic
The microscopy technique Almeida developed was simple, yet revolutionary for the field of virology.
When working with microscopic particles, it’s hard to know exactly what to look for. An electron microscope blasts a specimen with a beam of electrons and then records the particles’ interactions with the specimen’s surface. Since electrons have much shorter wavelengths than light, this shows scientists an image with much finer, smaller detail. The challenge is discerning if a tiny blob is a virus, a cell, or something else.
To solve the problem, Almeida realized she could use antibodies taken from previously infected individuals to pinpoint the virus. Antibodies are drawn to their antigen-counterparts—so when Almeida introduced tiny particles coated in antibodies, they would congregate around the virus, alerting her to its presence. This technique enabled clinicians to use electron microscopy as a way to diagnose viral infections in patients.
Almeida went on to identify a host of viruses including rubella, which can cause complications during pregnancy. Scientists had been studying rubella (aka three-day measles) for decades, but Almeida was the first to see it.
Discovering the coronavirus
As her skills gained recognition, Almeida returned to London for a position at St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School. There, in 1964,she was contacted by Dr. David Tyrrell, who oversaw research at the Common Cold Unit in Salisbury, Wiltshire. His team had collected samples of a flu-like virus they labeled “B814” from a sick schoolboy in Surrey, but had considerable difficulty cultivating it in the lab. As traditional methods failed, researchers began to suspect that B814 might be a new type of virus altogether. (There are more viruses on Earth than stars in the universe. Why do only some infect us?)
Running low on options, Tyrrell sent Almeida samples, hoping that her microscope technique could identify the virus. “We were not too hopeful but felt it was worth a try,” wrote Tyrrell in his book Cold Wars: The Fight Against the Common Cold.
Though Almeida had limited materials to work with, her findings exceeded Tyrrell’s best hopes. Not only did Almeida find and create clear images of the virus, but she remembered seeing two similar viruses earlier in her research: one while looking at bronchitis in chickens and the second while studying hepatitis liver inflammation in mice. She had written a paper about both, but it had been rejected. Reviewers thought the images were just poor-quality pictures of influenza virus particles. With the sample from Tyrrell, Almeida was confident they were looking at a new group of viruses.
As Almeida, Tyrrell, and Almeida’s supervisor gathered to discuss their findings, they wondered what to call the new group of viruses. After looking over the images, they were inspired by the virus’s halo-like structure and decided on the Latin word for crown, corona. The coronavirus was born.
Expanding her vision
Almeida retired from virology in 1985 but remained active and curious. She became a yoga instructor, learned how to restore fine china, and developed a sharp eye for antiques, which she often hunted for with her second husband Phillip Gardner, also a retired virologist.
Before her death in 2007 at the age of 77, Almeida returned to St. Thomas as an advisor and helped publish some of the first high-quality images of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Hugh Pennington, an emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, worked with Almeida at St. Thomas and describes her as his mentor. “Without doubt she is one of the outstanding Scottish scientists of her generation, but sadly largely forgotten,” Pennington said in an interview with The Herald. “Though ironically, this COVID-19 outbreak has shone a light again on her work.” (Here’s why a COVID-19 vaccine could take longer than a year to develop.)
Today, researchers are still using her techniques to rapidly and accurately identify viruses. Fifty-six years after she first saw a coronavirus through a microscope, Almeida’s work is more relevant than ever.
*Speakers and session titles are subject to change
*All times are in PDT
Time
Session Information
9:00-9:20
Welcome and Preview
John Etchemendy, Denning Family Co-Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Provost Emeritus, and Patrick Suppes Family Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University
Fei-Fei Li, Denning Family Co-Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Sequoia Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
Russ Altman, Kenneth Fong Professor and Professor of Bioengineering, of Genetics, of Medicine (General Medical Discipline), of Biomedical Data Science, and, by courtesy, of Computer Science, Stanford University; Associate Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Michele Elam, William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities Department of English Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, Stanford University; Associate Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Rob Reich, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Associate Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
9:20-10:30
Session I: Landscape and Framing
Talk Titles & Speakers
Challenges Responding to COVID-19: Perspectives from a Physician and Policy Maker Congressman Ami Bera, California’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives
An Academic Medical Center’s Data Science Response to a Pandemic Nigam Shah, Associate Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) and of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University
Issues in Responsible Reporting of COVID-19 Seema Yasmin, Director, Stanford Health Communication Initiative; Clinical Assistant Professor, Medicine, Primary Care and Population Health, Stanford University
Global Best Practices in Controlling the COVID-19 Pandemic Michele Barry, Professor, Senior Associate Dean, Global Health, Director, Center for Innovation in Global Health; Medicine & Senior Fellow, Woods Institute and at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University
Panel Discussion and Audience Q&A Moderator: Rob Reich
10:40-11:40
Session II: Social Impacts & Bio-Security
Talk Titles & Speakers
COVID-19 Infodemic and Crisis Informatics Kate Starbird, Associate Professor, Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington
COVID-19: Misinformation & Disinformation Renée DiResta, Technical Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory
COVID-19 & Biosecurity Megan Palmer, Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
“Foreign Bodies”: COVID-19 and Xenophobia Eram Alam, Assistant Professor, History of Medicine, Harvard University
Panel Discussion and Audience Q&A Moderator: Rob Reich
11:50-1:30
Session III: Tracking the Epidemic
Talk Titles & Speakers
Taiwan’s Use of Data Analytics to Control COVID-19 Jason Wang, Director, Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention, Stanford University; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, The Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital and of Medicine
Tools for Estimating Unreported Infections of COVID-19 Lucy Li, Infectious Data Scientist, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub
Methods for Real Time Mapping of COVID-19 Cases Worldwide John Brownstein, Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Epidemiological Forecasting Tools for COVID-19 Ryan Tibshirani, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics and Machine Learning Department, Carnegie Mellon University
A Mobile App Intervention to Slow COVID-19 Using Crowdsourced Data Tina White, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
AI for COVID-19: An Online Virtual Care Approach Xavier Amatriain, CoFounder and CTO, Curai
Knowledge Technology to Accelerate Open Science in Addressing the COVID-19 Pandemic Mark Musen, Professor, Department of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) and of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University
What We Can Learn From Twitter Analysis About COVID-19 Johannes Eichstaedt, Assistant Professor (Research), Department of Psychology, Stanford University; HAI Junior Fellow
Panel Discussion and Audience Q&A Moderator: Russ Altman
1:45- 3:00
Session IV: Treatments & Vaccines
Talk Titles & Speakers
Evolution and Emergence of hCoV-19 Marc Suchard, Professor, Department of Biomathematics, Biostatistics and Human Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles
Rapid Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Content Using the Functional Genomics Platform Kristen Beck, Research Staff Member, IBM Almaden Research Lab
COVID-19 Machine Learning Challenges Anthony Goldbloom, Founder and CEO, Kaggle
Machine Learning Enabled Systems for Delivering Care to Critically Ill Patients Ron Li, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hospital Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, Stanford University
AI-Assisted Elderly Care for Acute Infection and Chronic Disease Fei-Fei Li, Denning Family Co-Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Sequoia Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
Identifying COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates with ML Binbin Chen, MD and Ph.D. Student, Department of Genetics, Stanford University
Repurposing Existing Drugs to Fight COVID-19 Stefano Rensi, Research Engineer, Bioengineering Department, Stanford University
What’s the truth in a plethora of Corona news and speculation?
In this issue of Technion LIVE we offer an informed and eloquent explanation of COVID-19. Also, tune into Prof. Marcelle Machluf to understand how her fascinating research on Nano Ghosts is now being pursued as a therapy to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic.
Wishing you a peaceful and restorative weekend and Shabbat Shalom!
The Technion LIVE Team
Trapping Corona Cell by Cell
Prof. Marcelle Machluf explains how her patented Nano Ghost therapy may be used to fight the coronavirus.
A special page at NEJM.org presents a collection of articles and other resources on the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, including clinical reports, management guidelines, and commentary. All articles are freely available.
While we are constantly cautioning people from putting too much validity to the results seen in this bellow mentioned paper, it was not coming from thin air to the researchers minds.
The ABO blood groups are a result of various and different glycans on the surfaces of red blood cells and their defenition is related to immunology of blood and the core of blood typing in blood donation. It was also the hallmark of the 1930 Nobel prize of medicine.
e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2766682/ in this article the authors claim and show that the ABH(O) glycan can modulate the surface of cells and their interactions to pathogens, in this case the malaia pathogen.
Glycans are involved in the interaction of the flu virus to the host cell and Tamiflu (Oseltamivir ) is based on the inhibition of that sort of interaction/modulation.
Even if true, the numbers in this paper show statistically significant difference but midly significant differences in risk profile to suggest we are to pay too much attention to the phenomena or worry, regardless of the fact these result have no significance on behavioral instructions nor would I run to check my blood type in regards to this. I would neither totally ignore the finding as it may shed light on viral pathology and infection mechanisms and understanding the later may lead us to treatment or effective vaccines. But we are still early in this path.
“Having established a potential threat based on replication in primary human cells and preference for the human ACE2 receptor in vivo, we next sought to determine if monoclonal antibody therapies could be used to lessen disease similar to ZMApp for Ebola (13).
….
Together, the in vitro and in vivo data indicate that a mixture of broadly neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV would likely provide significant protection if WIV1-CoV–like viruses successfully transmitted to humans.“
Later in the article the authors discuss potential efficacy of vaccines vs the Mab approach:
“Together, the data indicate that DIV vaccination would not provide significant protection and may cause adverse effects in the context of WIV1-CoV spike-mediated outbreak.”
I think if this is borne out with both circulating forms of CoVID-19, the implication will be that treatment based on Mab derived from recovered patients will be in use long before any vaccine based approaches can be implemented.
I think there is relevance, but there is a problem in that the Chinese autopsied case study clearly indictates a lymphocytopenia. The lymphocyte produces antibodies. The provision of antibodies seems to be a good idea.
TECHNION —>>>>>>>>>>>>>> THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2020 || 12 P.M. ET
TECHNION Chemical Engineering Professor Avi Schroeder : Could a Vaccine for Shrimp Help in the Fight Against COVID-19? molecule called siRNA replaces naturally occurring RNA molecules
From: “Michael Waxman-Lenz, American Technion Society” <info@ats.org>
Organization: The American Technion Society
Reply-To: “Michael Waxman-Lenz, American Technion Society” <info@ats.org>
Subject: New Webinar: Could a Vaccine for Shrimp Help in the Fight Against COVID-19?
Dear Technion Friend,
In this period of physical distancing, we at the American Technion Society are working with Technion professors, alumni, and students to keep our community connected to the work of the Technion — addressing both the current global crisis, and the needs of generations to come.
These are trying times, but they also bring opportunity. We’re pleased to launch our new Live From Israel Webinar Series, a weekly presentation designed to help inform and inspire us in this uncharted time of uncertainty. Join us tomorrow to hear from our first speaker, Professor Avi Schroeder. Please see below for additional details. We will keep you abreast as we confirm additional speakers.
Thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Michael Waxman-Lenz
Chief Executive Officer
Could a Vaccine for Shrimp Help in the Fight Against COVID-19?
With Professor Avi Schroeder
Whether it is the novel coronavirus behind the global COVID-19 pandemic, or one that causes a devastating disease in shrimp, all viruses require certain proteins in order to pass from one cell to another. Stopping the production of those proteins will effectively stop the virus.
In this special webinar, Technion Professor Avi Schroeder will talk about how synthesizing a molecule called siRNA, and using it to replace naturally occurring RNA molecules, has proven effective in stopping the highly destructive white spot virus from passing from one cell to another in shrimp. According to Prof. Schroeder, it could be possible to apply the same technology to help in the fight against COVID-19.
Webinar access link will be provided upon registration.
Featuring
Professor Avi Schroeder
Professor Avi Schroeder is an associate professor and a member of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion. He leads the Laboratory for Targeted Drug Delivery & Personalized Medicine Technologies.
Prof. Schroeder’s focus is on the development of targeted and more personalized medicines, including nanotechnology. Of particular focus to him is using such medicines to better and more effectively treat cancer and improve patients’ quality of life. He is the author of scientific papers in the field of nanotechnology and medicine and is the inventor on 14 patents.
Prof. Schroeder has received 20 national and international innovation awards and is a successful scientific entrepreneur, having launched five Technion spin offs.
TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY – —>>>> Monday, March 23, 2020, 10:30–11:30 a.m. Eastern time
International Teleconference
Coronavirus and Me: Overcoming the Crisis
Monday, March 23, 2020 10:30–11:30 a.m. Eastern time
A discussion and Q&A with leading experts from Tel Aviv University. Call-in details will be provided upon registration.
THREAD: NY will remain perhaps the only big city school system to stay open after sustained community transmission has been identified in city limits. LA, SF, Chicago, Philly school systems are all closing. So are private NYC schools. Only public NYC schools are being kept open.3:35 PM · Mar 14, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
increase in US cases (now 2175) but marked under-detection d/t dearth of tests note doubling times
See Israeli and European KOLs on the efforts to curve the COVID-19 crisis by innovation.
JVP commenting on their wake-up call
reporter Ofer Markman, PhD
I was deeply moved – Jerusalem, Italy, New York, Dubai, Kiryat Shmona, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, research institutions, and start-ups. Today we brought them all together and convened a first of its kind international conference to discuss coronavirus and how innovation is rallying to save the world from the COVID-19 crisis.
This is the time to share information. The leaders of the world cannot isolate themselves and close borders of knowledge. This is the time to share Big Data globally, to work together with start-ups worldwide in the effort to save lives. This is the vision. This is the goal.
I would like to sincerely thank everyone who joined us today. People who’ve been working around the clock saving lives and searching for solutions, joined with us to share information, clarify their needs, offer ideas and share a snapshot of the situation. Not only that. They also spoke about the rays of light in this ocean of sadness. It was a morning of hope and inspiration. We will carry on until we find an answer. We will not give up.
Because if innovation can change cities and countries, it can also save the world.
#JVP #Cisco #AstraZeneca #New York City Economic Development Corporation #Weizmann Institute of Science #Israel Innovation Authority #MIGAL Galilee Research Institute
From Dubai was an owner of a chain of hospitals in Italy was talking on the logistic global challenge of keeping supply while the world in closing on you due to leadership fear of a medical crisis.
Italy for me it was mostly sanding to see a medical system in disbelief of the scale and speed such an epidemic wave can come.
The president of Aastra Zeneca israel talked about working the global logistic as the biggest international pharma in China
In general everyone talked on the scale when it hits
A big hospital in Israel shaarei zedek again talked on protecting the medical staff as you expect a growing scale and the effect of the first death, but also a big concern for the other sick, their avoiding treatment and their health.
Courtesy Karikó/University of Pennsylvania
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