Corona Research

Many people with post-COVID syndrome who suffer from fatigue six months after a coronavirus infection are still severely physically impaired up to 20 months afterward. The study by ECRC researcher Judith Bellmann-Strobl and her colleagues was published in “eClinicalMedicine.”

Researchers at BIH and the Max Delbrück Center have developed a new approach for vaccines against coronaviruses using modified spike proteins with lower binding affinity. This method could make vaccinations more effective, the team writes in the "European Journal of Immunology".

A new tool can identify cells that are actively responding to a SARS-CoV-2 infection. As reported in "Science Advances" by the Gargiulo lab, it can be used to screen for effective COVID-19 therapies and can be tailored to study other viruses as well.

EASI-Genomics, an EU-funded project designed to facilitate researchers’ access to cutting-edge DNA sequencing technologies, is nearing completion after four years. Janine Altmüller, head of the Genomics Platform, takes stock of what has been accomplished.

Critically ill COVID-19 patients often have antibodies in their blood that bind to the body’s own structures. But these autoantibodies frequently bind to multiple targets, Kathrin de la Rosa’s team reports in “European Journal of Immunology.” This calls into question their role in disease progression.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have been working on mucosal vaccines that can be administered through the nose. Now, scientists in Berlin have developed a live attenuated vaccine for the nose. In “Nature Microbiology”, they describe the special immune protection it induces.

Algorithms developed at the Max Delbrück Center are able to quickly detect new SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater. But that’s not all: the tool, which Altuna Akalin and his colleagues have now presented in “Science of the Total Environment”, can also find other pathogens.

SARS-CoV-2 has long been suspected of causing chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). A team of researchers from Charité and Max Delbrück Center now provides scientific evidence in the journal “Nature Communications”. The researchers also describe a similar clinical picture with a presumably different cause.

More and more drugs are available for the treatment of COVID-19. Researchers from Charité, FU and MDC in Berlin have investigated the mechanisms of action of antiviral and anti-inflammatory substances. In the journal "Molecular Therapy" they describe that a combination of both works best.

The question of how the Covid virus takes over host cells and suppresses the body's defences has been the subject of much debate. Now a research team led by Marina Chekulaeva at the MDC has pinpointed the crucial mechanism involved. Their results have been published in the journal “RNA”.