Dr. Francis Collins featured our Science paper on the NIH Director’s Blog.

The study, led by Gregory Ippolito and Jason Lavinder analyzed the complete repertoire of antibodies against the spike protein from four people soon after their recoveries from mild COVID-19.

The first author of the study is William Voss, a graduate student at UT Austin. In addition to Lavinder and Ippolito, senior authors from UT Austin are Jimmy Gollihar, Ilya Finkelstein, Brent Iverson, Jason McLellan and George Georgiou. Georgiou is a professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering and at UT Austin’s Dell Medical School. Gollihar is also affiliated with the Army Research Laboratory South.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/05/03/science.abg5268

“Researchers at the University of Texas have developed an antibody test for the coronavirus that they say is more accurate, scalable and affordable than the commercially available tests used to analyze blood samples and determine whether an individual was previously infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.

The test also could offer a glimpse into the future of the pandemic by allowing for a more detailed analysis of how people’s immune systems respond to the virus and what an individual’s immunity to the virus could look like over time.”

Read the full article here:

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200914/will-new-antibody-test-developed-by-ut-scientists-be-game-changer

Responding to a need to quickly develop billions of doses of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines, a scientific team at The University of Texas at Austin has successfully redesigned a key protein from the coronavirus, and the modification could enable much faster and more stable production of vaccines worldwide.

The new findings are described in the journal Science.

https://cns.utexas.edu/news/covid-19-vaccine-innovation-could-dramatically-speed-up-worldwide-production

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has initiated the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs) program, a new network of research centers that will work together in a coordinated, multidisciplinary effort to develop more durable, broadly protective and longer-lasting influenza vaccines. NIAID will provide up to approximately $51 million in total first-year funding for the program, which is designed to support the CIVICs program centers over seven years.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-forms-new-collaborative-influenza-vaccine-research-network