Harvard research scales down
Sarah Fortune, the John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, leads a lab of about 20 scientists who study tuberculosis. Her lab at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health is in a biosafety level 3 containment facility, so researchers must wear N95 personal respirator masks and full-body Tyvek protection suits to experiment on specimens of the disease that, in 2018, infected an estimated 10 million people and killed 1.5 million worldwide, according to World Health Organization figures. The researchers are looking at drug resistance, and host response is important in early preclinical vaccine development. But last week, as the numbers of COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts and the U.S. continued to rise, Fortune had to make a gut-wrenching decision. Her lab came to a complete stop. Scientists saved what data they could and destroyed cultures and other materials they couldn’t, but they didn’t stop there. They donated their masks, suits,...