COVID-19 Research Registry

Sign up for COVID-19 updates

 

Lynn Enquist, Ph.D.
Curator-in-Chief

Keeping up with the most recent research publications is challenging for any investigator, but when hundreds of publications and preprints are appearing every week on SARS-CoV-2, the task can be overwhelming. The launch of the ASM COVID-19 Research Registry (Registry) was a milestone for ASM in response to the needs of the scientific community.

The goal of the Registry is not to be a simple collection of publications. We seek to provide a "one-stop shop" of authoritative information of fundamental research on SARS-CoV-2. We want the Registry to bring together traditional and non-traditional microbiology researchers and experts and provide them with reliable and up-to-date scientific information about SARS-CoV-2 studies. Moreover, the Registry aims to be the go-to source for educators and students who want to find solid materials for teaching and learning about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

In a short time, we have established the Registry site and system that provides aggregated access to vetted fundamental research on SARS-CoV-2, and other selected viruses. Every week, the ASM Registry staff funnel research articles to our expert curators who chose the best preprints and publications. These items are added continuously to the site. Our curators continue to recommend previously published and impactful papers. Collectively, you can find over 120 high quality papers on the Registry today.

We hope new connections and new ideas will develop. A new feature, Research Resources, was added to the Registry. There, we will include research tools and information for the research community.  For example, for those who want to see a more encyclopedic account of what is being reported about COVID-19, the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis has a good dashboard to follow the numbers of publications and preprints.

Sincerely,

Lynn Enquist, Ph.D.
Curator-in-Chief

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Commentary

By Linda J Saif, Distinguished University Professor, The Ohio State University, Wooster, Ohio
 
“Trinity of COVID-19: Immunity, inflammation and intervention” by Tay, M.Z., et al, Nat Rev Immunol 2020
 
To date many approaches to therapeutic interventions for COVID-19 are empirical or based on only limited knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Based on increasing numbers of global reports, a clearer understanding of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis and pathophysiology is emerging to guide the rational design of targeted interventions. This is the topic of the selected review.
 
This review of the pathophysiology of SARS CoV-2 infections is comprehensive and timely. The authors highlight the temporal sequence of coronavirus replication in respiratory tract cells and induction of healthy immune responses. They then characterize the chronology and potential contribution of dysfunctional immune responses to disease progression, focusing on the observed uncontrolled inflammation and cytokine storm leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome. Important and pertinent aspects of SARS and MERS coronavirus pathogenesis are compared to illuminate related data on SARS CoV-2 infections. A table of relevant interventional clinical trials (March 2020) is included, but more updated versions are available on the WHO web site.
 
Significant conclusions include:

1. Combined synergistic therapies are needed to inhibit both virus infection and regulate the dysfunctional immune responses.
2. Studies of healthy versus dysfunctional outcomes and their chronology are critical to elucidate biomarkers of disease severity that will aid in the rational design of targeted interventions and a timeline for their application.
3. Identification of biomarkers for immune correlates of protection and those related to disease severity are important for the design of safe and efficacious vaccines to circumvent immunopathology and to induce protection, respectively. 

Unknowns that require additional research are how age, sex, genetics, co-morbidities, hypoxia, co-infections, immune landscape, microbiota, drug treatments, etc contribute to SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility, dysfunctional immune responses and disease severity. More information on innate immune responses is needed. A comprehensive, One Health, multi-disciplinary approach is highly relevant to answer these questions. Examples include: How do the coronavirus ancestor host species (bats) cope with SAR-like coronavirus infections to render them innocuous? How do the incidental hosts (cats, felids, ferrets, mink, non-human primates, etc) respond to SARS-CoV as a largely asymptomatic or mild infection? How do the above parameters influence the pathophysiology and severity of the disease and immune responses in humans compared with the animal disease models? Continued studies of the full spectrum of coronavirus disease (enteric, respiratory, systemic, and nervous systems) in naïve and partially immune natural host species are also warranted to delineate the impact of coronavirus infections on multiple organ systems and immune responses and to test potential targeted interventions, including vaccines.

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Video & other curricular resources for COVID-19

• Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (AAC) Podcast: Therapeutic approaches for COVID-19: Myths and Facts.
• Science Forum: SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) by the numbers.
• Vaughn Cooper: “The ongoing evolution of SARS-CoV-2” April 1, 2020 (YouTube11:21).
• Dr. Pamela Bjorkman: Intro to Viruses, Antivirals, and Vaccines April 10, 2020 (YouTube 52:57).
• Scott Page: Understanding Fatality Rate Models  April 3, 2020 (YouTube 10:12).
• Minute Physics: "How to tell if we’re beating Covid-19"  March 27, 2020 (YouTube 7:15).
• 3 Blue 1 Brown "Simulating an Epidemic"  March 27, 2020 (YouTube 2:07).
• Britt Glaunsinger: "Coronaviruses 101, Focus on Molecular Virology"  March 25, 2020 (YouTube 1:02:18).
• Vaughn Cooper: "Evolutionary Biology of Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2"  March 24, 2020 (YouTube 11:48).
• Pennings and colleagues: "How does SARS-CoV-2 spread?"  March 24, 2020 (Vimeo 8:25).
• Nick Jewell "The Exponential Power of Now"  March 19, 2020 (YouTube 1:06:00).
• Online Marty: "Disease Spread Simulation"  March 18, 2020 (YouTube 2:52).
• Pennings and colleagues: "Coronavirus in numbers"  March 11, 2020 (Vimeo 10:18).
• Pennings: "SARS-CoV-2 and phylogenetic trees"  March 2, 2020 (Vimeo 14:15).
• University of Pennsylvania: "Coronavirus Outbreak Symposium"  April 3, 2020 (YouTube).
• Coursera: Fighting COVID-19 with Epidemiology: A Johns Hopkins Teach-Out  (Free Course).

Blogs

• Dougan and Holt: “How to make a new COVID-19 vaccine starting from scratch” April 9, 2020.