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Title
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Today@Brown
Description
An account of the resource
This collection captures the different events announced on Today@Brown, a daily email received by all members of Brown, as screenshots.
Text
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The University is carefully and thoughtfully considering the implications for non-degree visiting and exchange students, visiting faculty and researchers, and general visitors in its plans for the 2020-21 academic year.
Brown continues to value the contributions that Brown’s visiting and exchange programs bring to our academic community, but the pandemic and related public health actions have significant implications for successfully hosting non-degree visiting and exchange students, visiting faculty and researchers, and general visitors at Brown for the coming year. Consequently, the following temporary operational changes related to these visitors are in place for Fall 2020.
With the exception of those who are teaching in the Fall 2020 semester, or who are required for essential on-site research, lab and instructional duties:
-- Non-degree, visiting undergraduate, graduate and medical students (domestic and international) will not be allowed to attend in person in the Fall 2020 semester. (Note: This restriction does not apply to initiatives of the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership, undergraduate cross-registration programs with Wheaton College and RISD, graduate cross-registration programs with Harvard University and RISD, the Graduate School Exchange Scholar Program, or participants in the Employee Education Program or those approved for essential research.)
-- Visiting and adjunct faculty, and postdoctoral scholars who are teaching in the Fall and other individuals required for/involved in essential research should limit their time on campus to the hours required for classroom instruction office hours, and/or research activities if either are being held in person. The University has established detailed policies for on-campus operations for individuals with roles or work designated as “essential.” Visiting and adjunct faculty, postdoctoral scholars and other individuals required for/involved in essential research who are authorized to be on campus will need to comply with University safety policies regarding COVID-19, complete any required training related to those policies, and may be subject to mandatory testing for COVID-19 depending on the nature of their role and amount of time on campus. Amid the uncertainty of the pandemic, please be aware that Brown may need to make adjustments to these guidelines if public health guidance changes. For more information on designated essential roles, visiting and adjunct faculty, postdoctoral scholars and other individuals required for/involved in essential research should consult their department chair and dean, as well as the FAQ for Staff & Managers, and Faculty. (https://healthy.brown.edu/faq)
Requests for required essential on-campus research in the Fall 2020 semester by visiting and adjunct faculty, postdoctoral scholars and other individuals required for/involved in essential research must be submitted by the department chair/center director to the Research Continuity Committee in the Office of the Vice President for Research via the process outlined on the Resuming Research web page. (https://www.brown.edu/research/conducting-research-brown/resuming-research)
The University will continue to monitor the evolving circumstances and will provide further guidance and updates to visitors regarding the spring semester as more information becomes available.
Thank you for your cooperation and collaboration.
Sincerely,
Richard M. Locke
Provost
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Updated Visitor Policies
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Richard M Locke, Provost
Publisher
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Today@Brown
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
August 28, 2020
adjunct faculty
postdoctoral
research
visiting and exchange students
visiting faculty and researchers
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f05f982b73cfad925f28cfdb9cba8243
Dublin Core
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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“It’s … breathtaking,” the researchers of the BrunO2 research group tweeted in March as they watched an early prototype of their ventilator, an entanglement of tubes and wires, inflate and deflate a balloon. The BrunO2 team, a small group of University faculty and students, built the device with the hope that one day it would fill a COVID-19 patient’s lungs with air. In the past few months, this prototype — a contestant in the Code Life Ventilator Challenge — has transformed into a new device, created by merging minds across campus and the world.
Now inflating lungs like its namesake, the “PufferFish” ventilator is the product of PezGlobo (meaning pufferfish in Spanish) — a collaboration that has expanded to also include Stanford University, the University of Utah and industrial and financial companies. The group’s website launched July 10.
Earlier this spring, the anticipated surge in COVID-19 cases did not reach Rhode Island, relieving the threat of a ventilator shortage for the time being, according to Co-Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Engineering Daniel Harris.
But even as the immediate local need for ventilators abated, the researchers continued deliberating, designing and tinkering.
In the event of another COVID-19 wave, the researchers expect their design to be beneficial to patients — especially because flexibility in the ventilator’s composition ensures its accessibility, Co-Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Engineering Jacob Rosenstein said. Using comparatively affordable and readily available components, the team hopes to also make their device a viable option in nations with fewer medical resources.
By making the ventilator’s components, building instructions and source code available worldwide, the researchers will allow healthcare professionals to build the ventilators themselves. In this way, their work may elevate the application of open-source hardware — a concept that is still developing in the realm of medical technology.
When the pandemic was still in its infancy in the United States, Co-Principal Investigator and Professor of Engineering Roberto Zenit received a notification about the Code Life Ventilator Challenge and brought Harris, Rosenstein and several others on board. With a firm deadline approaching for the competition, they gave up their days and nights to build the machine.
But they soon realized that a project of such magnitude — with an impact that they hoped would extend beyond the confines of the competition — would demand input from future users, Harris said.
To offer these perspectives, medical students, providers and technicians have since weighed in on the project, Zenit said. Researchers from Stanford and the University of Utah, who had been collaborating on their own Vent4US ventilator, later partnered with Brown. Researchers from other nations, including Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, have also contributed, with some building and testing the ventilator at their home institutions.
Harris emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and acknowledged the “innate creativity and curiosity with new problems” that students brought to this interinstitutional undertaking.
The design “has changed a lot, but the spirit remains the same,” he said of the latest and last ventilator model.
There are multiple means to deliver oxygen to a patient non-invasively using the ventilator.
This ventilator can attach to oxygen lines in hospitals or to portable oxygen tanks and deliver oxygen through various channels, such as the mouth, nose or through a face mask. To measure and regulate air pressure delivered to a patient, the device includes sensors and valves. Its design ensures that these valves — which were designed by students — did not come in contact with the air inhaled or exhaled by a patient, allowing researchers the freedom to forgo the usual expensive and scarce sterile materials. Still, stringent certifications apply to the “medical grade tubing” that is opened and closed by the device, delivering air to the patient.
The ventilator’s real-time controls and touchscreen interface are the physician’s portal into the complicated machinery operating underneath. They are critical to functionality and ease of use in situations of urgency, Rosenstein said.
The PufferFish ventilator features real-time controls, regulating complex machinery within.
Above all, safety remains of utmost importance. “There’s this kind of dance in the electronic design between making it beautiful and fancy and sophisticated and also simple enough that we can promise that it’s safe,” Rosenstein said.
The researchers have been testing their device using breathing simulators and are applying for FDA Emergency Use Authorization approval.
“Everybody kind of has an attitude that this is for the common good, whether it’s somebody that needs this device today or whether it’s somebody who’s going to need it next year somewhere else in the world,” Rosenstien said.
“What this project has demonstrated is that (if you) put people together with a common goal to do a good deed, you can achieve amazing things very quickly,” Zenit said.
Breathe out: The Bubbler, a COVID-19 testing kit
Worldwide, limited access to testing remains one of the greatest impediments to combating COVID-19.
University genomics researchers have sought to create a COVID-19 testing technique that would expedite the current process and allow for mass surveillance testing in the future. The researchers, led by Professor of Biology Will Fairbrother, have dubbed their testing device “The Bubbler” — in reference to its design and in fond homage to Rhode Islanders’ name for a water fountain.
The Bubbler testing kit consists of a capped glass tube, a glass straw and a reaction solution. The person getting tested blows into the solution, exhaling any viral particles in their breath.
The current method of COVID-19 testing involves retrieving a swab sample from the nose. This technique is not only uncomfortable but also hazardous for the technician administering the test, who risks being exposed if a COVID-19 positive patient sneezes during the process. Running the current test in the lab can take only a few hours, Fairbrother said, and people may get results back in a few days.
But what if this technique could be simplified — the first step as simple as a child blowing bubbles with a straw?
This is the principle idea behind The Bubbler testing kit, which collects samples from patients by having them blow into a clear tube of liquid through a glass straw, an action that produces bubbles.
The ease with which this test could be administered is not only safer in practice but also captures a more “critical” sample. When an infected person breathes into the straw, particles containing the viral protein — similar to those that would be released when a patient coughs or talks — are exhaled.
Alternatively, a sample could be obtained by scraping a patient’s mouth and inserting the resultant material into the tube.
Once the particles are ejected into the liquid, the solution catalyzes a chemical reaction immediately. If the tested person has COVID-19, the reverse transcriptase enzyme, a protein in the solution, makes DNA from the SARS-CoV-2’s RNA genome. This process differs from that of other tests in which this reaction takes place at a later stage.
Researchers hope COVID-19 test samples from The Bubbler could be analyzed collectively due to a primer barcoding technique that would be unique to the reaction solution in each tube.
Even though receiving an individual test result would not necessarily be faster using this method, researchers think The Bubbler will prove more efficient than standard tests, as it allows for a large quantity of samples to be sent for simultaneous analysis, rather than analyzing the results of one patient at a time, Fairbrother said.
But for this large-scale process to work, each Bubbler would need to be linked to a specific person. The reaction in the tube requires a primer — a starter DNA molecule from which reverse transcriptase can copy any viral RNA in the solution for downstream analysis. In order to tag each sample, a portion of this sequence can be purposefully designed for each kit and thereby each patient — like a barcode.
“We’re trying to get a rapid test; we’re trying to get something that we could mail out to people,” Fairbrother said.
The Bubbler testing kit would be conveniently and neatly packaged for easy use and delivery and wide application.
This type of test also has potential to disclose the exact genetic code that each tested person’s virus carries, which may harbor information on how the virus has evolved and its mode of transmission. It may also help diagnose other illnesses.
To gather data on The Bubbler’s effectiveness, patients tested for COVID-19 at Rhode Island Hospital have been asked to participate in the experimental testing method alongside their standard test. All personnel involved in handling the kits are taking the necessary safety precautions, including decontaminating the kit using ultraviolet light, as well as additional cleaning with heat and disinfectants.
Next steps include obtaining FDA approval for the kit, expanding its usage and conducting surveillance testing.
Other researchers in the group include Luke Buerer ’18, research technician Jing Wang, postdoctoral student Chaorui Duan, physician Gregory Jay, resident physician Caroline Meehan and clinical research assistant Sam Kaplan.
“It’s just nice to be able to help and work towards something,” Fairbrother said. “I feel really optimistic and sort of excited to go forward.”
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Online newspaper article
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Take a breath
Engineering inventions at Brown to diagnose, treat COVID-19
Creator
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Emilija Sagaityte
Source
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Brown Daily Herald
Publisher
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 18, 2020
COVID-19 Seed Fund
research
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b123e1df908f5e795a0bc232b2a4633f
Dublin Core
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Title
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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In total, 476 students received a Brown Connect Collaborative SPRINT award as part of a University initiative to fund remote student research opportunities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of June 30, 228 SPRINT awards were given to students with external internships, 208 for faculty collaborations and 40 for community partnership experiences. The number of awards given is likely to increase as funding is provided to some students on the waitlist, but is unlikely to exceed 500, Director of CareerLab Matthew Donato wrote in an email to The Herald.
The SPRINT awards, or “short-term projects for research, internships and teaching,” were created to help students find “opportunities that can be carried out remotely” and to “create new, flexible, shorter-term options to support a greater number of students,” according to CareerLAB’s website. The awards offer $2,000 stipends to recipients, with an additional $1,000 automatically awarded to students “with high demonstrated financial need,” according to the website.
Over 1,600 individual students applied for SPRINT awards in May, with decisions released June 16. As the application allowed students to list multiple choices, many applied for multiple opportunities, with more than 1,900 applications submitted altogether. According to Donato, one of the individuals in charge of reviewing applications, many students were also waitlisted. “It’s not a small waitlist and I don’t know that we’ll necessarily be awarding many SPRINT awards to students on the waitlist,” he said. “We had a high percentage of students who received awards actually accept those awards.”
Over 200 unique positions were offered on BrownConnect for students to collaborate with faculty members or community partner organizations. Additionally, students were able to apply for funding for their own unpaid internships or research opportunities elsewhere.
The program was developed by the University in partnership with CareerLAB, the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning and the Swearer Center for Public Service.
According to Besenia Rodriguez, senior associate dean for curriculum, the idea for the awards — and the wide scope of opportunities to which they could be applied — came largely in response to what she and her colleagues “were hearing from students about how their opportunities for summer … were being changed quite dramatically, and in many cases offers were rescinded for internships or even for jobs.”
“One very unique part of this program was that it was open to seniors who just graduated in May,” Rodriguez said. “The purpose for that is because we knew that the economic impact of the pandemic was having a strong effect on students who were just graduating in terms of their career prospects,” she added.
Victoria Rose ’23 applied for three SPRINT opportunities with faculty partners, as well as for funding for two outside opportunities she found on BrownConnect, but did not receive an award.
“The way that they advertised it, I kind of expected to get something, so I was a little surprised that I didn’t get anything at all,” Rose said. She is “desperately trying to find a job, which there are none of,” while she remains in Providence, Rose added.
According to Donato, the review committee “did prioritize students with demonstrated financial need, particularly some of our highest need students.”
“I definitely agree that they should do whatever they can to prioritize … low-income people,” Rose said. Since the SPRINT committee did prioritize based on need, Rose said she supported a committee making the final decisions for each opportunity, rather than the individual faculty members leading specific projects. “If that means not letting the faculty or whoever make the decision, then that’s fine,” she said.
In the application review process, nearly 30 reviewers examined applications and submitted ratings of students’ proposals. The reviewers prioritized students’ applications that demonstrated the opportunity would impact their learning and development, Rodriguez said. While faculty and community partners were sent information about finalists and were able to provide their feedback or preferences, the final decision was made by the SPRINT committee.
Mamiko Yajima, an assistant professor of molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry, offered a SPRINT opportunity doing informatics analyses of proteins of interest. She did not have access to her finalists’ records “but was given short comments written by each student to identify the possible best match,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.
Li-Qiong Wang, a senior lecturer in chemistry whose SPRINT opportunity focused on developing interactive lab videos, received nine finalists to give feedback on. “I got (a) very good pool,” she said. Ultimately, two students were accepted for Wang’s opportunity.
Wang plans on having weekly meetings with her team, which also includes two UTRA recipients and one volunteer, to develop the videos. Despite the distance, she still hopes for “them to have a group bonding,” she said.
Malery Nguyen ’21 applied for one faculty collaboration in the American Studies department and another in the History department. She was initially waitlisted, but received an email on June 23 that she was taken off the waitlist and had gotten her first-choice opportunity.
Nguyen said she wished there was more open communication in the application process. “I’m on pretty significant financial aid, and some of my friends are as well,” she said. “When I got waitlisted and they got the SPRINT I was like, ‘Oh, maybe my application was really bad.'” Nguyen would like more information on “how CareerLAB went through the applications because … it felt kind of rushed.”
“It definitely has helped me feel more financially supported for the summer,” Nguyen said. But she still may take on a part-time job “ to make up for other expenses,” she said.
Donato acknowledged that the funds offered fell short of student demand. “We know that sometimes (SPRINT funding) … isn’t adequate to cover all a student’s costs, but we know it can certainly make a difference in a student being able to take a learning opportunity,” Donato said. He thinks the overwhelming interest in the program “highlights that we need to continue making these programs as accessible as possible for students, (and) we need to continue … raising more money to be able to fund more of these opportunities,” he said.
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Out of 1,600+ applicants, SPRINT awards 476 students funding for remote summer research opportunities
Description
An account of the resource
CareerLAB received unexpected volume in applications for program launched in response to conditions caused by COVID-19 pandemic
Creator
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Jack Walker
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Brown Daily Herald
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Brown Daily Herald
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 1, 2020
careerlab
internships
research
SPRINT
summer 2020
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bf86272e4314ea8c70b50ac4cb8c2a6e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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With the assistance of the COVID-19 Research Seed Fund awards, several projects are diving in to investigate COVID-19 on the microscopic, molecular level.
How pharmaceuticals impact COVID-19
Members of the Brown Experimentalists Against COVID-19 research group, dubbed the BEACON group and led by principal investigator and Professor of Medical Science and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Wafik El-Deiry, have traditionally dedicated their time to cancer research. But in March, they began studying the immune system’s response to COVID-19 and pharmaceutical drugs’ effects on the disease, The Herald previously reported.
The COVID-19 Seed funding has helped the team push their experiments forward. They are investigating how to block the interaction between the “spike” protein on the virus’s surface and the ACE2 receptor on human cells. Fitting together like a lock and key, these two molecules allow the virus to pass into human cells.
The researchers are testing the efficacy of singular drugs as well as combinations that they hope could block this entryway. Targeting the protease protein that enables infectivity by cleaving the spike protein could be one effective approach.
But this approach is hardly the only option. Questions linger about whether some drugs may have the potential to elevate the response from T-cells, the body’s natural defenders, or to alleviate the “storm” of cytokine proteins that flood the body in response to infection — and may lead to respiratory complications in COVID-19 patients. These Brown researchers are seeking answers.
“At this point, we have a couple of candidates that look promising for suppressing the (ACE2) receptor” and lessening “the severity of the cytokine storm,” El-Deiry said. The researchers are also looking into how drugs affect the creation of this protein prior to its placement on the cell’s surface.
BEACON’s focus on fostering teamwork extends from its members to its potential solutions to COVID-19: They are exploring how the coupling of different drugs may target the virus at multiple stages of its life cycle.
Remdesivir — a drug that has been tested widely in the treatment of COVID-19 and one of the lab’s drug candidates — has shown promising results in other studies, reducing hospitalization stays among the “severely ill.” Still, the medication has not yet had an equal impact in significantly reducing deaths from the disease, El-Deiry said.
Although remdesivir may prevent the virus from replicating, the BEACON researchers’ preliminary data suggested that the drug could impact cellular factors and thereby actually increase infectivity before its beneficial effects against the virus kick in. To contend with this counterproductive initial consequence, they are working on pairing this medication with another drug that could first safely counter infection by COVID-19; remdesivir would then function as backup if the virus managed to evade the first drug.
Those at the forefront of the lab’s COVID-19 research include Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Shengliang Zhang, Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Lanlan Zhou, Teaching Fellow in Medicine Ilyas Sahin, surgical research resident Cassandra Parker, Lindsey Carlsen GS and Kelsey Huntington GS.
“We want to contribute useful knowledge that affects how people think about the drugs and what may be possible to bring to the patients,” El-Deiry said.
Correlating chitinase-like proteins with COVID-19
The potentially fatal transition from a persistent cough to pneumonia, resulting in a disproportionate number of deaths among the elderly have defined much fear of COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. A University study has been researching whether the root causes of this transition and trend may be linked in part to a specific chitinase-like protein.
In humans, chitinase-like proteins bind present chitin molecules, and prior research has suggested that these proteins may thereby affect immunity, according to a 2011 study by Ober et al. Chitinase enzymes break down chitin, the material that composes the hard shells covering some insects, explained a principal investigator of the study and Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Chun Lee, who formerly studied chitinase independent of COVID-19.
Having higher chitinase-like protein levels, which is the case for older individuals and those with other diseases like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and cancer, could explain why some people have a higher susceptibility to COVID-19 and more extreme symptom severity, according to co-principal investigator, Senior Vice President for Health Affairs and Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Jack Elias, who has come across patients receiving lung-related critical care throughout his years as a pulmonary physician.
The team of University researchers is studying whether having a larger number of these proteins may have deleterious consequences by regulating the protease protein and the receptor molecule for SARS-CoV-2 on cells so in order to aid viral entry, Lee and Elias explained.
The researchers — who also include co-principal investigators Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Bing Ma and Associate Professor of Medicine Bharat Ramratnam ’86 MD’93 — are determining the exact relationship between the chitinase-like protein and vulnerability to the new virus through a series of experiments involving lung cells and animal models.
“We set this whole system up to study cancer,” Elias said. “But the more we sat and talked to each other and read the literature (on COVID-19), the more we kept saying, ‘Oh, that’s like what we’re studying.’”
Results from pilot experiments reassured the researchers that their hypotheses were worth pursuing.
Their transgenic mice — mice which have been experimentally modified to express a gene of interest — have been altered to express the gene coding for the chitinase-like protein, which the researchers can regulate, turning “on” the gene has led to an “increase of expression of (the ACE2) receptor and protease,” Elias said — meaning that when more of these proteins are present, more receptors for COVID-19 are active. The receptor is also appearing on cells outside of the lungs upon the expression of this gene, and the researchers aim to identify the locations throughout the body where chitinase has a regulatory role.
The team also plans to measure the quantity of the protein in human blood serum samples, Elias and Lee said. These people can then be followed to see whether they become infected and whether the COVID-19 patients recover quickly or end up in critical condition. The outcomes can be linked to their chitinase-like protein levels to analyze whether a correlation between the two exists.
If such a relationship is found, understanding this pattern could allow health care providers to use the protein measurements as biomarkers — indicators of how COVID-19 would likely run its course in different people, Lee and Elias said.
The researchers are also testing drug efficacy and how strongly specific antibody molecules, which they have developed, can bind to their protein of interest. This route of investigation could lead to a means of preventing the chitinase enzyme from having such a negative effect in COVID-19 patients.
Lee added that the Seed funding has been “really instrumental … for initiating this unexpected project.”
Studying the structural proteins of COVID-19
While discussions about COVID-19 research have often hovered around the virus’s signature spike protein, another team of University researchers have instead been investigating the less-studied nucleocapsid “N” protein, a protein which the “viral genome wraps around,” now with the assistance of the COVID-19 Research Seed Fund. They intend to “leave no stone unturned,” said Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology Mandar Naik, a co-principal investigator of the study who is familiar with coronaviruses from his prior work on SARS-CoV.
COVID-19 uses RNA to carry its genetic material and replicate. This RNA associates with the N protein, which contributes to the function, quality and packaging of the virus’s genome, according to Naik and Nicolas Fawzi, co-principal investigator and associate professor of molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology.
“If we could understand ‘how does (the N protein) work?’ and ‘what might we do to disrupt that function?’, that would definitely be a potential avenue for therapeutic” agents, Fawzi said.
The principal investigators, several University graduate students and laboratory staff are now looking for compounds that could have the capability to become effective drugs for treating COVID-19 by inhibiting this protein. This disruption could interfere with the arrangement of the RNA and thereby impede its activity, or it may affect the proteins’ tendency to join together into larger molecules, Fawzi and Naik said.
Co-principal investigator and Associate Professor of Biology Gerwald Jogl compiled a list of hundreds of candidates from analyses using a computer software that indicates which molecules might successfully inhibit the N protein, which Naik intends to test using the N protein in the lab. Fawzi will then use these compounds to determine their effects on the RNA-protein interactions.
Professor of Medical Science and Neurology, Director of Cancer Signaling and Vice Chair of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry Walter Atwood, also a co-principal investigator, will also apply his expertise in virology to contribute to experiments on the drug compounds’ activity within the actual COVID-19 virus. Any ensuing clinical trials on patients would likely involve further collaborations, Naik added.
“The Brown response on all levels was amazing,” Jogl said. He added that all of the COVID-19-related research projects are coordinated and readily exchanging information, “giving us a feel that this is a community tackling” the issue.
The researchers are studying other proteins as well, such as the associated membrane “M” protein and the envelope “E” protein on the virus’s surface, Naik said. They are hopeful that this work will not only identify potential drug candidates for COVID-19 patients but also augment scientists’ understanding of a broader category of viruses that rely on these proteins.
COVID-19 is “unfortunately not going to be the last virus that’s going to come around, so if we learn something about virus biology in general, then next time we (will be) better off,” Naik said.
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Starting at the microscopic level: COVID-19 researchers at Brown combat viral proteins
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Emilija Sagaityte
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
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June 17, 2020
research
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15786e696984910dd2447b1fb322494d
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Brown Daily Herald
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This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
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Most University undergraduate students prefer on-campus experiences for the upcoming academic year, according to the results of the Undergraduate Student Preferences Survey on 2020-21 Academic Year Scenarios.
Sent to all returning undergraduate students May 17, the survey garnered an 84 percent response rate, accruing 4,475 responses. Another 1,234 incoming first-year students — 70 percent — also responded to the survey, which they received May 20.
The survey was developed to “gather information to guide and refine Brown’s plans for the fall in conjunction with a wide variety of additional factors, data points and considerations,” Provost Richard Locke P’18 wrote in a June 18 Today@Brown announcement regarding the key findings from the survey.
Over 1,800 students also provided further comments in the survey, mostly regarding topics including the cost of attendance for the 2020-21 academic year, plans for ensuring the health and safety of the University and wider community, the impact of the various scenarios on summer employment, research and internship opportunities and relevant plans for events, gatherings and residential arrangements.
The University is still considering three options for the 2020-21 academic year: a tri-semester model in which students would enroll in two semesters out of the three offered; an entirely remote fall with a decision about the spring semester to be made during the fall; or a normal academic calendar allowing all students to return to campus — an “optimistic scenario that is largely dependent on broader progress in testing and treatment,” Locke wrote.
“Student preferences will serve as one factor in the complex effort to develop solutions that protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the extended community, while maximizing teaching, learning and research operations to the greatest extent possible,” he wrote.
President Christina Paxson P’19 has committed to sharing an official decision on the University’s plans for the fall by July 15, The Herald previously reported.
Preferences for on-campus experiences
For each of the outlined options under consideration, the survey asked students whether they would choose to remain enrolled in the fall or would instead request a leave of absence or gap year.
In the case of a fully remote fall semester, 47 percent of returning students and 60 percent of incoming first-years indicated that they would complete the term remotely. Under a normal, on-campus calendar, 84 percent of returning students and 93 percent of incoming first-years said that they would enroll and return to campus.
Among students who would be unable to return to campus due to travel restrictions or health considerations, exactly half of returning students said that they would complete the fall semester remotely, with the other half indicating that they were likely to request a leave or were undecided about their plans. Among incoming first-year students under either of these restrictions, 47 percent would enroll remotely, a quarter would request a gap year and 27 percent were unsure.
Preferences under the tri-semester scenario
The survey also asked first-, second- and third-year students to indicate their top two semester combination preferences under the three-semester model.
An overwhelming proportion of these students — 85 percent of first-years, 87 percent of sophomores and 90 percent of juniors — identified the fall/spring semester combination as their first choice. The spring/summer combination was the “second-choice favorite” for 45 to 49 percent of students, followed closely by the fall/summer combination, which 33 to 42 percent of students selected as their second choice.
If offered the fall/spring combination, nearly 90 percent of each group — incoming first-years, sophomores and juniors — indicated that they would likely return to campus for both semesters. But students’ likely decisions varied more for the fall/summer and spring/summer options.
Only 43 percent of juniors said they would take both semesters in person if they were given the fall/summer combination, with 22 percent planning to take the summer semester remotely and 27 percent indicating that they would instead request a leave of absence for the year. Two-thirds of incoming first years and 53 percent of sophomores said they would take both semesters in person if given this non-consecutive combination.
If offered the spring/summer option, over half of students in each year said they would return to campus for both semesters, but another 13 to 20 percent of students would take the summer semester remotely and nearly a quarter of juniors would not re-enroll for the year.
Seniors were asked about their preferences for each semester separately, rather than for semester combination preferences. Most indicated that they would “expect to enroll in the fall and spring semesters and complete all graduation requirements before the summer,” according to the key findings report.
While the University has not yet released additional details on what a tri-semester model will look like, in her written testimony to the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Paxson outlined elements of the University’s plan in the event that there is at least some on-campus learning in the fall, The Herald previously reported.
Classrooms, libraries and dining halls would be “reconfigured to enable social distancing” and large lectures would take place virtually. Residence halls would be “de-densified,” so that students would live in singles and bathrooms would be shared among fewer students.
Under this “de-densified residential scenario,” the University would also need to rent hotel rooms and implement further safety measures. And if following a tri-semester calendar, Locke said the University will likely need to hire more faculty to teach during the extra semester, The Herald previously reported.
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Online newspaper article
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Students express preference for return to campus, fall/spring semester combination in tri-semester model
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Kaylo Guo
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
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June 21, 2020
Christina Paxson
fall 2020
gap year
internships
leave of absence
Online Classes
research
Richard Locke
spring 2021
summer 2021
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Today@Brown
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This collection captures the different events announced on Today@Brown, a daily email received by all members of Brown, as screenshots.
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With ongoing concerns about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), researchers at Brown should plan for potential disruptions, including in laboratories and research facilities. These disruptions could range from minor to significant. A new webpage on the Brown Research website (https://www.brown.edu/research/conducting-research-brown/covid-19-updates-research-brown) gives guidance. It also outlines resources to help researchers in considering and preparing for possible disruptions, as well as managing ongoing sponsored projects. It will be updated as new details become available or information changes.
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Impact of COVID-19 on research activity at Brown
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Noel Rubinton JR
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Today@Brown
Date
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March 13, 2020
Closure
research
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4b6065cecd24beb500a13ba4e91545a8
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Brown Daily Herald
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An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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The University distributed $350,000 in research funds through the COVID-19 Seed Awards this April to faculty carrying out experiments on the virus and its societal impact. The 15 diverse projects, selected from about 50 applicants, range from the sciences and medicine, to engineering, public health and data analysis, according to Vice President for Research and Professor of Mathematics Jill Pipher and the University website.
As faculty wished to pursue innovative projects to understand and combat COVID-19, the University used its operating budget to establish the fund and “make it possible to do this aspirational work at the most critical time,” Pipher wrote in an email to The Herald. The research chosen for the fund appeared to have a “potential significant, rapid impact on human health” or “would create products of immediate need for the health care system.”
A cohort of studies are tackling the molecular aspects of the pandemic. These projects include the establishment of a blood sample biorepository, research of the virus through its genome and investigations on hormonal impacts on the virus.
Building a blood biorepository
Blood lies at the heart of numerous translational and biomedical research studies — those related to COVID-19 and not — but accessing clinically-relevant patient samples, especially during a pandemic, has proven challenging.
A newly-built blood biorepository housed at the Lifespan Clinical Research Center is preserving human blood samples at freezing temperatures to help facilitate COVID-19 investigations, said the project’s principal investigator, Senior Associate Dean for the Program in Biology and Professor of Medical Science Edward Hawrot. He hopes the samples will be readily accessible — and thus, used quickly.
“‘The goal of this biobank is to go bankrupt,’” Hawrot said, quoting co-principal investigator Bharat Ramratnam, associate professor of medicine, chief science officer of Lifespan, and medical director of the Lifespan Clinical Research Center.
The samples are drawn from patients visiting the Rhode Island and Miriam Hospitals’ emergency rooms. These patients have been informed about the risks and benefits that come with participating in this program and have consented to donate their blood to research studies. They typically do not know whether or not they have COVID-19 at the time the blood samples are obtained, but they will have exhibited symptoms, Hawrot said.
To date, at least 100 people have donated their blood to the biorepository, according to the Advance Clinical Translational Research website. The volume collected from each participant will be shared among many researchers in smaller quantities.
Researchers interested in using these samples are able to apply through the Advance-CTR website, which opened May 29. They can also obtain pertinent demographic or medical data about the patients whose samples they receive if it is necessary for their research, but this process is “highly regulated” to protect any personal information, Hawrot said. Researchers’ detailed requests must go through an institutional review board.
Investigators from Rhode Island hospitals, Brown and the University of Rhode Island have expressed interest in using the samples, Hawrot added.
Professor of Medical Science and of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Wafik El-Deiry’s lab, which also received a COVID-19 Seed award, hopes to use these blood serum samples to compare spike and cytokine protein levels in healthy people, those with varying levels of COVID-19 severity and those with COVID-19 and cancer, El-Deiry said.
The biorepository team is also in discussions with the University of Nebraska Medical Center about making these blood samples available at the United States’s other clinical and translational research centers through a virtual COVID-19 biobank, Hawrot said. This way, researchers who may have a shortage of samples in their area could request more from other CTRs.
The University team also includes co-PIs Professor of Emergency Medicine, Medicine and Engineering Gregory Jay and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine Francesca Beaudoin.
Funding from the group’s COVID-19 Seed award is being allocated toward supplies and compensating additional personnel who have been collecting and processing the blood samples.
Gathering information from the genome
The virus responsible for COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, uses RNA as its genetic material and passes these molecules from cell to cell upon infection. Another group of University researchers aims to use their expertise in infectious disease and engineering to assess the virus on a molecular level through its genome and ultimately help address the pandemic on personal and public health levels.
Identifying variations in the virus’s genome across locations and in people over time could illuminate more about the origins and development of the virus, which “could be relevant for the current wave of the pandemic or (a) future wave of the pandemic,” said Professor of Medicine Rami Kantor, a principal investigator of this COVID-19 Seed-funded project.
Kantor’s lab has previously collaborated with the other principal investigator of the project: Anubhav Tripathi, professor of engineering and medical sciences (courtesy). Kantor and Tripathi have worked on similar studies considering the RNA genome of HIV in efforts to address the development of drug resistance to the virus.
The project’s other researchers include Vlad Novitsky, MD, PhD; Akarsh Manne, MS and Mark Howison ‘06, MS from Kantor’s lab and Lindsay Schneider GS, Kiara Lee GS and Dulguunnaran Naranbat GS from Tripathi’s lab.
But to carry out their new experiments, the researchers must first sequence the viral genome.
This process often requires polymerase chain reaction, which replicates a small quantity of starting RNA — a technique which is costly and time-consuming.
To accommodate the high quantity of virus samples expected for this study, Tripathi and members of his lab are developing devices and technological methods that are “faster, cheaper, easier and (of) greater use,” he said.
Once the researchers sequence the RNA of viruses from infected patients in Rhode Island, they plan to examine these sequences in the context of other sequences from the region and around the world to learn how mutations in the genomes compare, Kantor said.
They plan to compare viral genomes based on COVID-19 severity and other health conditions in the patients that the virus infected. The team could also investigate reinfection from the virus, Kantor said.
The experiments “could help us track the infection, track its origin, track different waves of it and hopefully help prevent people from getting infected currently or in the future,” he said.
Following a hunch about hormones
COVID-19 seems to affect male and female patients differently: Infected males on the whole tend to have more serious symptoms and outcomes than females, said Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Lalit Beura, the principal investigator leading a study in his lab on the possible link between hormone levels and COVID-19 pathogenesis, the progression of the disease.
Before the pandemic, Beura’s lab was already studying how other diseases disproportionately affect men and women. They turned their attention to coronaviruses once the pandemic was underway.
“Having this funding opportunity from Brown definitely opens up possibilities … to start a new area of research,” Beura said.
This discrepancy may be due to differences in hormone levels. While estrogen and progesterone hormones are more common in females, testosterone is generally abundant in males. The researchers are using mouse models and a coronavirus that infects mice — related to but different from the COVID-19 virus — to determine whether there is a relationship between hormone levels and illness severity, Beura said. By manipulating testosterone levels in mice, they can watch how COVID-19 manifests in response and how this change impacts immune cell activity, which spurs the disease when excessive. Another possibility is investigating the potentially protective attributes of estrogen, Beura added.
Once the researchers develop an evidence-based idea of the hormones’ either helpful or harmful influence on the disease, this knowledge will have “direct applicability to how we treat this disease (and) how we design our policies to avoid having such disparate outcomes,” Beura said. This research could then lead to clinical applications in the long run whereby drugs related to hormone molecules could help regulate COVID-19 in patients.
Sharing sentiments with the other researchers, Beura said the University funding helped make this unprecedented research possible.
Although the COVID-19 Seed fund has already been exhausted, Pipher wrote that the fund’s intention was to propel COVID-19 research efforts quickly in their early stages.
For example, the award helped the blood biorepository get off the ground, Hawrot said. “That’s the advantage of these awards. … You build trust and cooperative spirit.”
For researchers still seeking funding for COVID-19-related work, the University has sustained its commitment to connect faculty with funding from external organizations, Pipher wrote.
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Brown Research Seed Fund fuels ongoing research on COVID-19
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Emilija Sagaityte
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
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research
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This collection captures the different events announced on Today@Brown, a daily email received by all members of Brown, as screenshots.
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Funding opportunities to support research relating to COVID-19 from various agencies and organizations are listed on a new OVPR web page. The page will be updated regularly and the work is subject to review in keeping with current laboratory policies at Brown. Contact Kate_Duggan@Brown.edu with questions or to add funding opportunities.
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COVID-19 Funding Opportunities
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Noel Rubinton Jr
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Today@Brown
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March 26, 2020
research
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Today@Brown
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This collection captures the different events announced on Today@Brown, a daily email received by all members of Brown, as screenshots.
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For news on Brown research, including on COVID-19, follow @BrownUResearch on Twitter--the latest in information & stories about Brown research from around the world.
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Keep up-to-date on Brown research
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Noel Rubinton Jr
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Today@Brown
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March 26, 2020
research
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Today@Brown
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An account of the resource
This collection captures the different events announced on Today@Brown, a daily email received by all members of Brown, as screenshots.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
The Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) welcomes proposals for Rapid Response Research digital scholarship projects from the Brown University community. Do you have an immediate need for a team to offer advice on how you can design and develop a digital scholarship project on COVID-19 or another emergency? Faculty, would you like support for a course related to a rapid response project? Graduate students, would you like help incorporating a rapid response digital scholarship project into your dissertation? Brown University community members may submit a proposal to receive support from a small CDS team to collaboratively work towards project development, initial development prototypes (e.g. mockups for a database, creating an original dataset for a text mining project), user testing, text analysis, and other exploratory or short-term work. Rapid Response Research digital scholarship projects should be amenable to completion within approximately six months.
Don’t hesitate to contact us directly at digitalprojects@brown.edu with any questions about your project idea or the application process. The full CFP is available here: https://library.brown.edu/create/cds/call-for-proposals/
Dublin Core
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Title
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CFP: Rapid Response Digital Scholarship Projects
Creator
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Ashley M Champagne
Publisher
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Today@Brown
Date
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May 1, 2020
center for digital scholarship
research