The why’s behind COVID-19 survival and immunity investigated
This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. Researchers in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are adapting an antibody-detection tool to study the aftermath of infections by the novel coronavirus that is causing the current global pandemic. The tool, called VirScan, detects antibodies in people’s blood that indicate active and past infections by viruses and bacteria. It was developed in 2015 by Stephen Elledge, the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and of Medicine at HMS and Brigham and Women’s, and two Ph.D. candidates in the lab, George Xu and Tomasz Kula. Because it takes five to 10 days for a person to develop antibodies, Elledge emphasized that VirScan would not be used to provide real-time diagnoses of infection...