COVID-19
Developing new therapies and getting them to patients is long and difficult. During public health emergencies, such as the Covid-19 Pandemic, science must move faster than ever. That is where translational science comes in. Translational science is focused on streamlining the process of moving (“translating”) lab findings into medical practice and treatments to improve health and well-being.
NCATS is supporting research activities spanning the translational science spectrum to address the novel coronavirus 2019 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease it causes (COVID-19). To accelerate translational research, NCATS has developed research tools, technologies, expertise and collaborative networks that can quickly pivot to address urgent public health issues.
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Columbia University
The mission of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research is to advance discoveries, knowledge, and innovation to improve human health across the lifespan for diverse populations in upper Manhattan and around the world. By mobilizing and connecting Columbia University’s researchers, we aim to create a seamless integration of community and academic partnerships. Our commitment to train a multi-faceted workforce, provide vital resources to researchers, and improve the efficiency of research processes, promotes the collaborative team science framework needed to translate research discoveries into effective interventions that address current and future health concerns.
We provide over 70 different services and programs focused on education and training, seed funding, bioinformatics, biostatistics, clinical research, lifespan research and special populations, regulatory knowledge and bioethics, an off-site community facility and health informatics websites. 
July 23, 2021The CCTSI responded to the pandemic by issuing a rapid-release RFA to address COVID-19. CCTSI leaders called it the COVID-19-Rapid Research Pilot Program. They released the RFA on Monday evening, March 30 and closed the application process just four days later. This new pilot grant program supported the development of novel diagnostic and treatment methods and innovative technologies related to
July 23, 2021LITTLE ROCK — A statewide COVID-19 antibody study led by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) found that by the end of 2020, 7.4% of Arkansans had antibodies to the virus, but there were wide disparities among racial and ethnic groups. UAMS researchers released their findings this week to a public database, medRxiv (med archive). The study included analysis of more than 7,500
July 22, 2021The CTSA program was developed to accelerate new treatments from the lab to patients, enabled to a large extent by patients participating in and benefiting from clinical trials. Clinical trials provide that needed bridge from human subjects to hypotheses to treatments that can directly benefit human health. And, never has this connection been more critical than amid the global COVID-19 pandemic
July 20, 2021No champion race car driver can win without a dedicated pit crew. The same is true in medical research. Thanks to their “pit crew” Mayo Clinic researchers were able to repurpose an experimental therapy, called lenzilumab, for patients with COVID-19 pneumonia, and from there into a phase three clinical trial — all in about one year. "I think we’ve accomplished in this year what normally would take
July 20, 2021Our summer intern discusses her research evaluating healthcare spending & clinical outcomes among disadvantaged populations. Where do you go to school, and what are you studying? I’m an MD-PhD student at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m currently in the graduate phase of my training and am studying epidemiology. Who is your mentor and what is your project? I’m excited to be working with
July 18, 2021With funding from CTSI, University of Minnesota researchers worked with local Indigenous community partners to develop evidence-based and culturally appropriate COVID-19 resources, creating three distinct fact sheets on staying healthy and staying connected during the pandemic. The project, “Helping Indigenous communities stay connected in light of COVID-19,” was conducted by the Memory Keepers
- Journal of Clinical and Translational Science
Introduction: With no approved treatments for COVID-19 initially available, the Food and Drug Administration utilized multiple preapproval pathways to provide access to investigational agents and/or medical devices: Expanded Access, Emergency Use Authorizations, and Clinical Trials.
-Emory UniversityThe 34th Healthcare Innovation Symposium will be held on Wednesday, July 14, 2021, 12:00-2:00 pm online via Zoom. The topic is Regenerative Medicine for COVID: Hope or Hype? Regenerative medicine cell therapies have shown great potential to modulate inflammatory and degenerative disorders. This symposium will review the rationale and current use of cell therapies to treat patients with COVID
July 07, 2021Sample code templates developed by the iTHRIV CTSA team enable rapid analytics onboarding to the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Data Enclave. The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Data Enclave is an analytics platform containing clinical data from electronic health records from over 55 sites around the country. This data from SARS-CoV-2 positive patients (and matched controls)
VCU Wright Center: COVID-19 survivor and ACTIV-1 trials participant looks forward to traveling again
July 06, 2021When Linda Thompson retired from the Virginia Department of Transportation in 2019, she started a new job the next day — getting fit. “My new job was going to American Family Fitness and getting in the pool and doing water aerobics,” said Thompson, 72. “I was really in bad shape when I retired. So it was time for me to take care of Linda.” Thompson lost 60 pounds over the next year. The exercise
June 29, 2021The first two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employed a technology that had never before been used in FDA-approved vaccines. Both vaccines performed well in clinical trials, and both have been widely credited with reducing disease, but concerns remain over how long immunity induced by the new vaccine technology will last. Now, a study from
June 24, 2021COVID-19 has widened the life expectancy gap across racial groups and between the U.S. and peer countries. U.S. life expectancy decreased by 1.87 years between 2018 and 2020, a drop not seen since World War II, according to new research from Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Colorado Boulder and the Urban Institute. The numbers are even worse for people of color. On average
June 24, 2021Community health workers and health equity teams across Kansas have partnered with the University of Kansas Medical Center to launch a multimedia campaign "Community Health Workers Beat the Virus" in seven different languages to encourage COVID-19 testing and vaccination among under-resourced populations. This initiative is part of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for Underserved Populations
June 24, 2021The COVID-19 pandemic has permanently altered the lives of countless people. Not only that, but it has affected people unequally -- we have seen people of color dying at higher rates than white counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-…). A recent survey by USC researchers supports
June 24, 2021The COVID-19 pandemic has caused illness widely throughout the United States, but some communities have been hit disproportionately hard, such as the Latinx community. To help slow the spread of the pandemic in Los Angeles and Southern California, the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute's (SC CTSI) Community Engagement team has created a new workshop series
June 24, 2021When universities across the U.S. opted to return students to campus for in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic in the fall of 2020, surrounding communities were understandably concerned that COVID-19 infection rates would significantly increase. In response, several Penn State researchers formed the Centre County COVID-19 Data 4 Action Project (D4A) to conduct anonymous surveys and
University Of Southern CaliforniaFrom the University of Southern California CTSI, and Children's Hospital Los Angeles:
To accelerate translation, researchers need access to a broad range of data from a variety of sources (electronic health records, imaging, genetics, behavioral, etc.). These sources manage and store data differently, which creates the need for standardization. The Informatics Common Metric, which is in its second year, addresses the need to harmonize data across the CTSA Program. This will enhance
The webcast provides examples of how data interoperability was used in the N3C program for the COVID-19 pandemic. The first five webcasts are an introduction to informatics, created to build foundational knowledge and to define key terms. We encourage you to watch them in order.
June 16, 2021Throughout the pandemic, doctors have seen evidence that men with COVID-19 fare worse, on average, than women with the infection. One theory is that hormonal differences between men and women may make men more susceptible to severe disease. And since men have much more testosterone than women, some scientists have speculated that high levels of testosterone may be to blame. But a new study from
June 16, 2021Months after recovering from mild cases of COVID-19, people still have immune cells in their body pumping out antibodies against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Such cells could persist for a lifetime, churning out antibodies all the while. The findings, published May 24 in the journal Nature, suggest
June 14, 2021N3C Orientation Sessions A & B will now be offered just once-per-month (once for session A and once for session B). Sessions A & B will continue to alternate on a rotating basis. View the N3C Calendar for scheduled days and times. Previously recorded sessions can still be accessed on demand on the N3C Presentations & Webinars page of the website.- Journal of Clinical Oncology
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June 10, 2021People who successfully fight off COVID-19 without showing symptoms have much higher levels of IgG antibodies against the virus’s spike protein than do patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19, reports a research team led by Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in a recent issue of iScience. The researchers screened for the IgG antibody to the viral spike-
June 07, 2021The N3C article authored by Noha Sharafeldin, MD, PhD, MSc, et al has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The authors assembled the largest nationally representative cohort of patients with cancer and COVID-19 to date and identified demographic and clinical factors associated with increased all-cause mortality in patients with cancer. See Outcomes of COVID-19 in Patients With
May 28, 2021Our ambassador for Postgraduate Education shares his work which examines how value-based healthcare strategy can transform delivery and promote health equity. Junaid Nabi, MD, MPH, serves on a team of “ambassadors” who introduce our courses and training programs to faculty and scientists, both within and outside of Harvard University. A public health researcher and medical journalist, he is
May 28, 2021A leader in Informatics and creator of Harvard Catalyst Profiles discusses his innovative work to make COVID-19 research data available to the world. Griffin Weber, MD, PhD is the co-faculty lead for Harvard Catalyst’s Informatics team. He’s an associate professor of medicine and biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), where he directs-
May 26, 2021If you missed the webinar on Weds May 13th presented by Kenneth Gersing, MD, Director of Informatics NCATS DCI entitled Studying COVID-19 Using Real-World Data: Lessons Learned and Steps Forward After One Year of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), you can now access the recording. Topics include: • Lessons learned after one year of studying COVID-19 using real-world data • Future
- May 26, 2021Researchers with University of Iowa Health Care are working to identify ways to overcome access issues among migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
