News & HighlightsNews
As COVID-19 vaccines emerge, the search for antiviral drugs continues
Highly promising vaccines have recently emerged for COVID-19, but this doesn’t mean research into other treatments can slow down. There is still no cure for the disease, and people will likely continue to get sick even after vaccines become widely available—by not getting their COVID
Boosters are key to protecting pregnant individuals and newborns against the worst effects of COVID
...But how long does this protection last? A new study from The Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM), published in Nature Communications, found that patients with a specific cocktail of COVID exposure—vaccination, up-to-date boosters, and previous infection—had the highe...
Homing in on the genetics of severe COVID in children
One of the most terrifying aspects of the COVID pandemic has been its unpredictably severe impact on some children. While most infected kids have few or no symptoms, one in 10,000 fall suddenly and dramatically ill about a month after a mild infection, landing in the hospital with inflamed...
How antibodies from llamas may lead to COVID-19 treatment
...Nanobodies could become one more weapon in our arsenal against COVID-19, and potentially a widely available one.” In order to get there, Rout, Chait and their colleagues are now extracting antibodies from llamas and examining their molecular properties to identify those most effective a...
Common mutation linked to COVID mortality
It may be the most baffling quirk of COVID: What manifests as minor, flu-like symptoms in some individuals spirals into severe disease, disability, or even death in others. New research published in Nature may explain the genetic underpinnings of this dichotomy.  The researchers demonstrat...
How antibody therapy impacts COVID vaccines
...The findings suggest that feedback inhibition increases the coverage provided by COVID vaccines in people who previously received monoclonal antibodies. "Depending on the virus, feedback inhibition can either enhance immunity or inhibit it," says Michel C. Nussenzweig, who co-led the st...
Rockefeller team finds flawed data in recent study relevant to coronavirus antiviral development
The COVID pandemic illustrated how urgently we need antiviral medications capable of treating coronavirus infections. To aid this effort, researchers quickly homed in on part of SARS-Cov-2’s molecular structure known as the NiRAN domain—an enzyme region essential to viral replication that’...
The common thread in severe COVID-19 
Patients who suffer from severe COVID-19 tend to have one thing in common: insufficient or defective proteins that help regulate the immune system, known as type I interferons (IFNs).   Two papers from the laboratory of Jean-Laurent Casanova previously demonstrated that at least 10 percent...
Amid the rush for COVID-19 drugs, a case for the helicase
...Around the world, researchers working on developing treatments for COVID-19 are intensively examining each step of this process. Among them is Rockefeller’s Pels Family Professor Tarun Kapoor, whose lab has turned its expertise on stopping propagation of cancer cells to the virus, focus...
New design may boost potency of monoclonal antibodies against COVID
Monoclonal antibody drugs are among the few treatments available for COVID, providing a lifeline for those at high risk of severe illness and hospitalization. However, the usefulness of these drugs is limited because they are effective only when they can be administered early in the diseas...
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