Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Body Patches Might Help Keep Tabs On Changing Symptoms
You can’t cure COVID-19 with a Band-Aid. But you might be able to detect it. Dermal Photonics of Peabody says it has made a new kind of temperature sensor that’s attached to the body like an adhesive bandage, and can quickly detect changes in body heat that may indicate the onset of an infection. Compared to the smart watches and fitness trackers that are now being tested as possible COVID-19 detectors, the patch, called NIRA Temp, is smaller, simpler and a lot cheaper. (Bray, 7/27)
As shortages of personal protective equipment persist during the coronavirus pandemic, 3-D printing has helped to alleviate some of the gaps. But Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and his team are using the process in a more innovative way: creating tiny replicas of human organs — some as small as a pinhead — to test drugs to fight Covid-19. The team is constructing miniature lungs and colons — two organs particularly affected by the coronavirus — then sending them overnight by courier for testing at a biosafety lab at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. While they initially created some of the so-called organoids by hand using a pipette, they are beginning to print these at scale for research as the pandemic continues to surge. (Rosen, 7/27)
In just the first six months of this year, the Massachusetts biotech sector has already raised more than two-thirds of the venture capital it raised for all of 2019, according to a new report by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. The findings show that investment in the industry remained strong despite the economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic. (Enwemeka, 7/28)
There’s so much scientists still don’t know about the novel coronavirus: basic stuff, like how exactly it invades a host’s healthy cells, the molecular interactions that enable it to spread through the body and why it affects some people more than others. But a handful of labs in the Bay Area, including ones at UCSF and UC Berkeley, are trying to gain a better understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 behaves by doing basic research with live virus. The work could help scientists develop and test new treatments or vaccines to target the virus more effectively. (Arcuni, 7/27)
