SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightYouTubeA charismatic anti-vaccination campaigner has gained popularity by claiming that medical science’s approach to the pandemic is entirely wrong. But critics say Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury is endangering lives by falsely claiming he can cure Covid-19 through diet alone, report Ed Main and Reha Kansara.Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury is not one to hold back.”According to me, most deaths are not because of coronavirus itself but because of its treatment,” he says in one video on his website.The Indian social media star – or former social media star, now that he’s banned on several platforms – asserts that conventional medicine is a conspiracy designed to line the pockets of doctors and big business. image copyrightEPA”Drugs do not help in curing any illness,” he told the BBC. “I strongly believe that humans do not need vaccines at all.”In his videos, he claims his diet plans, rich in fruits and vegetables, will cure not only Covid-19, but diabetes and Aids.Medical science says all of this is nonsense. But Mr Chowdhury has used the pandemic to spread his messages.He teaches his followers that hospitals increase their chances of dying and says that Covid patients with breathing difficulties would do better sitting in front of a handheld fan than receiving oxygen.To his many critics, he is a dangerous fraud whose bad advice can only further fuel India’s horrific second wave of coronavirus.image copyrightReuters”Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury is a quack,” says Dr Sumaiya Shaikh, science editor of the Indian fact-checking website Alt News. “He has a huge following and that makes him even more dangerous.”It’s a following that has been cultivated through numerous books, online videos and courses and packed-out live events. India Covid crisis: Hospitals buckle under record surgeWhat is the India Covid variant and will vaccines work?Covid: India on UK travel red list as Covid crisis growsYouTube, Twitter and Facebook banned Mr Chowdhury last year, but not before he assembled an army of followers – nearly one million on YouTube alone before his account was deleted.He still has official channels on WhatsApp and Telegram. Biswaroop’s fans are also uploading and spreading his content on proxy accounts. WhatsApp told us they are working hard to limit the spread of false coronavirus information on their platform. Telegram didn’t respond to a request for comment.A gift for publicityMr Chowdhury presents himself as a plucky underdog figure pitted against a medical establishment intent on deceiving the public.Covid-19 is “just like normal flu” he asserts – despite the fact it’s actually significantly deadlier. And despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he claims that face masks don’t help stop the spread of virus and will actually make wearers ill. He has co-opted the Urdu word azaadi, meaning “freedom” – a rallying cry that resonates with many oppressed communities in India, for his slogan “masks se azaadi” (“freedom from masks”).image copyrightYouTubeIn one of his several coronavirus e-books, Mr Chowdhury offers 100,000 rupees (about £960; $1,300) to anyone who “can prove that vaccines have ever helped anyone in any way”.There is, of course, a vast literature of medical research stretching back decades that documents how vaccines have helped control and even eradicate diseases all over the world. But Mr Chowdhury discounts it entirely.Diet cure claimsMr Chowdhury started developing his controversial diet “cures” about a decade ago. It’s just one strand of a colourful and varied career. After training as an engineer, he dabbled in Bollywood film-making and even cast himself as the star in one movie.He is also the chief editor and founder of both the India and Asia Book of Records which is modelled on, but not affiliated with, the Guinness Book of Records.Nilesh Christopher, a journalist with the tech website Rest of World, says Mr Chowdhury became interested in nutrition when his wife couldn’t shake a flu-like illness.”What he told me was, he was running around from pillar to post, visiting doctors, and trying to figure out a cure for it, but he couldn’t,” he says. “That is when he goes into this mode of self-learning and he claims to have read research papers and figured out this magic formula which is coconut water, citrus fruits and vegetables.”The Anti-Vax FilesThe Anti-Vax Files: A new series from BBC Trending, on the World Service weekly from 05:30 GMT Saturday. Download the podcast or listen online India has a long tradition of Ayurvedic medicine, which uses food and herbal treatments to treat ailments. But Mr Chowdhury has made a series of outrageous and fantastical claims for the miraculous effects that can supposedly be achieved by patients who follow his advice.”He is definitely one of the biggest most prominent quacks in India,” says Mr Christopher. When Covid-19 appeared, Mr Chowdhury quickly declared it an “influenza-like illness” that could be cured by his pre-existing three-step flu diet. He set up a consultation service where patients are charged 500 rupees (£4.80; $6.70) to receive a diet plan.”He’s built a massive digital empire through online nutrition courses, certification programmes and consultancy services and that’s his business model,” says Mr Christopher. “That doesn’t change, no matter what the disease you throw at him.” Mr Chowdhury says he has cured more than 50,000 people of Covid-19 without any fatalities. But Dr Arun Gupta, President of the Delhi Medical Council points out that most people will recover from the virus regardless of what they eat.”If you claim you take 100 patients and I claim that I cure all of you, you see 97 per cent are going to get cured, even without any intervention,” he says. Dr Gupta says more should be done to stop the spread of such misinformation. “It is the responsibility of the government to take a note of it and make sure these people are contained,” he says.Mr Chowdhury stands by his methods and rejects allegations that his teachings put people at risk. “Are they giving any evidence? I don’t think so,” he told the BBC.Criminal complaintHowever, the nutritionist is under investigation for one specific claim that his methods have caused real life harm. Jaideep Bihani, from Delhi, has made a criminal complaint against Mr Chowdhury over the death of his mother Shanti in August 2017.Mr Bihani told the BBC he blamed Mr Chowdhury for her death “100%”.image copyrightJaideep BihaniMrs Bihani, 56, was suffering from diabetes, and heart and thyroid problems. After discovering Mr Chowdhury on the web, Mr Bihani paid hundreds of dollars to take his mother to a three-day event to learn his diabetes cure.The event was held at a holistic sanctuary on the outskirts of Delhi. A video of the first evening shows Mr Chowdhury urging his audience to stop taking their medicines.”I’ve got a box with me, it is called the medical orange box… All the medicines, we will put here and put a lock [on it]. So I hope you will never need those medicines again,” he said.Mr Chowdhury told the audience that patients who were in very poor health, like Shanti Bihani, would be monitored and given back some medicine if needed – but that food would act as their primary medication going forward. image copyrightJaideep Bihani”The moment you have your first diet, that will make you heart attack proof from that time,” he told the assembly. Mrs Bihani had been taking a range of medicines, but into the large orange box they went. The next day she complained of feeling drowsy and later collapsed. Eventually she was taken to hospital where she died after suffering a heart attack.In his criminal complaint, Mr Bihani accuses Mr Chowdhury of falsely claiming to be a medical practitioner, offering fraudulent treatments and failing to provide emergency care at the course. Mr Chowdhury denies all this. image copyrightJaideep BihaniThe most prominent qualification listed on Biswaroop’s website is an honorary PHD in diabetes, from Alliance International University, Zambia. It’s an institution that according to its website is headquartered not in Africa but in the Caribbean. This degree appears to be why Mr Chowdhury calls himself a doctor, although he didn’t answer our questions about this issue.In response to Mr Bihani’s allegations, a spokesperson for Mr Chowdhury told us that Mrs Bihani was a very ill woman who had been chewing paan masala, a mild but addictive stimulant made with areca nut and other substances. Her son denies that she was during the course.The spokesperson for Mr Chowdhury also said Mr Bihani had his mother’s medications on him throughout the course. But Mr Bihani also denies this was the case. Mr Bihani said he hoped his experiences should be a warning to anybody thinking of following Mr Chowdhury’s advice.”Watching my father every day just alone at this age, and watching my kids not being there with grandmum – you know, I can’t even tell you what I feel.” With reporting from Shruti Menon in Delhi.Listen to The Anti-Vax Files from BBC Trending, on the World Service. Download the podcast or listen online.

For more than a year, researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso’s Stanley E. Fulton Gait Research & Movement Analysis Lab in the College of Health Sciences have been using real-time 3D animation to investigate motor impairments in children who have autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Their aim is to understand how children with autism can learn motor skills, so that they can receive effective therapies.
The results of their study, titled “Children With Autism Exhibit More Individualized Responses to Live Animation Biofeedback Than Do Typically Developing Children,” were recently published in the journal of Perceptual and Motor Skills. The paper’s release coincides with National Autism Awareness Month in April.
“The greatest takeaway from this study is that when teaching or coaching new movements to an individual with autism, the teacher or coach needs to understand the individual with autism’s specific motor learning characteristics,” said Jeffrey Eggleston, Ph.D., assistant professor of kinesiology and Gait lab director. He is the study’s lead author. “They need to look specifically at each child’s needs because each child is different.”
The study’s other authors include Alyssa N. Olivas, a student in the doctoral biomedical engineering program; Heather R. Vanderhoof and Emily A. Chavez, students in the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences (IHS) doctoral program; Carla Alvarado, M.D., board certified psychiatrist; and Jason B. Boyle, Ph.D., associate professor and interim chair of Kinesiology at UTEP.
More than 80% of children with ASD have gross motor skills issues, such as problems with balance and coordination, which can interfere with their communication and social interactions.
The 18-month UTEP study incorporated live animation biofeedback to teach 15 children who have ASD and were between the ages of 8 and 17 how to do a squat, a strength exercise that works multiple muscle groups in the body’s lower extremities.
Researchers compared their movement patterns to children without the disorder. They found that children with ASD displayed highly individualized responses to the live animation biofeedback, much more so than children with typical development, Eggleston said.
In the lab, children had 1-inch cubes called inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors strapped to their pelvis, thighs, lower legs and feet. They followed an animation model on a computer screen, which showed them how to squat. The children would then try to perform the squat without looking at the animation.
IMU sensors captured the movement of the child’s lower extremities. The data was relayed to a computer graphics program via Bluetooth, which was transposed into a skeletal animation of the child squatting and then standing back up on the computer screen.
The study, which took place before the COVID-19 pandemic, was funded through a nearly $15,000 grant from the J. Edward and Helen M. C. Stern Foundation and UTEP’s kinesiology department.
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Materials provided by University of Texas at El Paso. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, mass vaccinations have begun to raise the tantalizing prospect of herd immunity that eventually curtails or halts the spread of SARS-CoV-2. But what if herd immunity is never fully achieved — or if the mutating virus gives rise to hyper-virulent variants that diminish the benefits of vaccination?
Those questions underscore the need for effective treatments for people who continue to fall ill with the coronavirus. While a few existing drugs show some benefit, there’s a pressing need to find new therapeutics.
Led by The University of New Mexico’s Tudor Oprea, MD, PhD, scientists have created a unique tool to help drug researchers quickly identify molecules capable of disarming the virus before it invades human cells or disabling it in the early stages of the infection.
In a paper published this week in Nature Machine Intelligence, the researchers introduced REDIAL-2020, an open source online suite of computational models that will help scientists rapidly screen small molecules for their potential COVID-fighting properties.
“To some extent this replaces (laboratory) experiments, says Oprea, chief of the Translational Informatics Division in the UNM School of Medicine. “It narrows the field of what people need to focus on. That’s why we placed it online for everyone to use.”
Oprea’s team at UNM and another group at the University of Texas at El Paso led by Suman Sirimulla, PhD, started work on the REDIAL-2020 tool last spring after scientists at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) released data from their own COVID drug repurposing studies.

Throughout the history of the West, human actions have often rushed the desert — and their actions backfired. In the 1920s, the Colorado River Compact notoriously overallocated water still used today by several western states because water measurements were taken during a wet period.
More currently, operators of the massive Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert are spending around $45 million on desert tortoise mitigation after initial numbers of the endangered animals were undercounted before its construction.
A study published in the journal Ecological Applications from the University of California, Davis, and UC Santa Cruz warns against another potential desert timing mismatch amid the race against climate change and toward rapid renewable energy development.
“Our study suggests that green energy and species conservation goals may come into conflict in California’s Mojave Desert, which supports nearly 500 rare plant species as well as a rapidly expanding solar industry,” said lead author Karen Tanner, who conducted the work as a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz under a grant led by UC Davis assistant professor Rebecca R. Hernandez.
Tanner spent seven years teasing out the demography of two native desert flowers — the rare Barstow woolly sunflower (E. mohavense) and the common Wallace’s woolly daisy (E. wallacei), comparing their performance both in the open and under experimental solar panels. The authors wondered, how would desert-adapted plants respond to panels that block light and rainfall? Would rare species respond differently than common species to these changes?
These aren’t easy questions to unearth. At one point, Tanner glued tiny seeds to individual toothpicks to gather emergence data. At another, she scoured the desert floor on hands and knees to count emerging seedlings of the rare sunflower — about the size of a thumbnail at maturity.

The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to authorize use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in adolescents 12 to 15 years old by early next week, according to federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans, opening up the nation’s vaccination campaign to millions more Americans.The news is highly anticipated: Eager parents have been counting down the weeks since Pfizer announced results from its trial in adolescents, showing the vaccine is at least as effective in that age group as it is in adults. Vaccinating children is also key to raising the level of herd immunity in the population and bringing down the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.The authorization could come as early as late this week, according to the federal officials, who did not give their names because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. If it is granted, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel will likely meet the following day to review the clinical trial data and make recommendations for the vaccine’s use in adolescents.The clearance would be a major development in the nation’s vaccination campaign and welcome news to parents anxious to protect their children during summer activities and before the start of the next school year.Pfizer reported several weeks ago that none of the adolescents in the clinical trial who received the vaccine developed symptomatic infections, a sign of significant protection. The company announced in late March that volunteers produced strong antibody responses and experienced about the same side effects seen in people ages 16 to 25 years.“We can assure the public that we are working to review this request as quickly and transparently as possible,” said Stephanie Caccomo, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman.Over 100 million of the nation’s adults have already been fully vaccinated. But the authorization would arrive in the middle of a delicate and complex push to reach the 44 percent of adults who have so far been hesitant to get a shot or have not had access to one.With much of the world clamoring for excess supply of vaccines made in the U.S., the Pfizer-BioNTech shot’s use in adolescents could also raise questions about whether supply should be targeted to an age group that so far appears to be mostly spared from a severe bout of Covid-19.“I do think we need to have a national and global conversation about the ethics of our vaccinating kids who are low risk for serious complications from the virus when there aren’t enough vaccines in the world to protect high risk adults from dying,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.President Biden has come under increasing pressure to give some of the country’s supply of vaccines away, and even within the federal government some officials have urged the administration to decide soon how much vaccine is needed, lest doses expire or be shipped to states and go unused. The federal government has bought 700 million doses of three federally-authorized vaccines to be delivered before the end of July — well beyond what would be needed to cover every American.The nation’s current vaccine supply is substantial. As of Monday, around 65 million doses had been delivered but not administered, including 31 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, nearly 25 million doses of Moderna’s, and 10 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s, according to figures collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines require two doses.Tens of millions more Pfizer-BioNTech doses — around three weeks’ worth, according to one federal official — have been manufactured and are in various stages of readiness, waiting to undergo final tests before being shipped.Moderna expects results soon from its own clinical trial involving adolescents ages 12 to 17, followed by results for children 6 months to 12 years old in the second half of this year.

The couple’s separation is likely to send shock waves through the worlds of philanthropy, public health and business.Bill and Melinda Gates, two of the most influential philanthropists in the world, said on Monday that they were divorcing.The couple have together emerged as leading figures in the global fight against Covid-19, and their separation is likely to send shock waves through the worlds of philanthropy, public health and business.The divorce will create new questions about the fate of the Gates fortune, much of which has not yet been donated to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Mr. Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, is one of the richest people in the world, worth an estimated $124 billion, according to Forbes.“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” the couple said in a statement that was posted to Mr. Gates’s Twitter account.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

An influenza vaccine that is made of nanoparticles and administered through the nose enhances the body’s immune response to influenza virus infection and offers broad protection against different viral strains, according to researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.
Recurring seasonal flu epidemics and potential pandemics are among the most severe threats to public health. Current seasonal influenza vaccines induce strain-specific immunity and are less effective against mismatched strains. Broadly protective influenza vaccines are urgently needed.
Intranasal vaccines are a promising strategy for combatting infectious respiratory diseases, such as influenza. They are more effective than vaccines injected into a muscle because they can induce mucosal immune responses in respiratory tracts, preventing infection at the portal of virus entry. They can also stimulate systemic immune responses throughout the body.
Scientists can overcome vaccine safety concerns and the long production phase of virus-based influenza vaccines by constructing intranasal vaccines with recombinant proteins or peptides. However, these vaccines are poor at producing immune responses, so it’s necessary to have potent mucosal adjuvants, substances that enhance the body’s immune response to antigens (the molecular structures on pathogens). The absence of appropriate mucosal adjuvants currently hinders the development of such a vaccine.
In this study, the researchers developed an intranasal influenza vaccine using recombinant hemagglutinin (HA), a protein found on the surface of influenza viruses, as the antigen component of the vaccine. HA is integral to the ability of influenza virus to cause infection.
They also created a two-dimensional nanomaterial (polyethyleneimine-functionalized graphene oxide nanoparticles) and found that it displayed potent adjuvant (immunoenhancing) effects on influenza vaccines delivered intranasally. The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Conventional flu vaccines predominantly induce antibody responses,” said Dr. Baozhong Wang, senior author of the study, principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health grant supporting the study and a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences. “However, recent research demonstrates that lung resident memory T cell responses are indispensable for optimal cross-protection against pulmonary influenza infection. The development of lung resident T cell responses requires vaccination by a respiratory route or influenza virus infection. Our research opens a new path for the development of needle-free and logistically simplified intranasal flu vaccines for cross-protection.”

She and her husband invented a dip-and-read paper strip that greatly simplified the diagnosis of the disease and paved the way for home test kits.Helen Murray Free, a chemist who ushered in a revolution in diagnostic testing when she co-developed the dip-and-read diabetes test, a paper strip that detected glucose in urine, died on Saturday at a hospice facility in Elkhart, Ind. She was 98.The cause was complications of a stroke, her son Eric said.Before the invention of the dip-and-read test in 1956, technicians added chemicals to urine and then heated the mixture over a Bunsen burner. The test was inconvenient, and, because it could not distinguish glucose from other sugars, results were not very precise.Working with her husband, who was also a chemist, Ms. Free figured out how to impregnate strips of filter paper with chemicals that turned blue when glucose was present. The test made it easier for clinicians to diagnose diabetes and cleared the way for home test kits, which enabled patients to monitor glucose on their own.People with diabetes now use blood sugar meters to monitor their glucose levels, but the dip-and-read tests are ubiquitous in clinical laboratories worldwide.Helen Murray was born on Feb. 20, 1923, in Pittsburgh to James and Daisy (Piper) Murray. Her father was a coal company salesman; her mother died of influenza when Helen was 6.She entered the College of Wooster in Ohio in 1941, intent on becoming an English or Latin teacher. But she changed her major to chemistry on the advice of her housemother; World War II was creating new opportunities for women in a field that had been a male preserve.“I think that was the most terrific thing that ever happened, because I certainly wouldn’t have done the things I have done in my lifetime,” Ms. Free recalled in a commemorative booklet produced by the American Chemical Society in 2010.She received her bachelor’s degree in 1944 and went to work for Miles Laboratories in Elkhart, first in quality control and then in the biochemistry division, which worked on diagnostic tests and was led by her future husband, Alfred Free. They married in 1947.Ms. Free during the 2000s performing glucose-testing experiments with schoolchildren. via National Inventors Hall of FameHe provided the ideas; she was the technician “who had the advantage of picking his brain 24 hours a day,” Ms. Free recalled in an interview for this obituary in 2011. They soon set their sights on developing a more convenient glucose test “so no one would have to wash out test tubes and mess around with droppers,” she said. When her husband suggested chemically treated paper strips, “it was like a light bulb went off,” she said.They faced two challenges. First, they needed to refine the test so that it would detect only glucose, the form of sugar that is found in the urine of people with diabetes. Second, the chemicals they needed to use were inherently unstable, so they had to find a way to keep them from reacting to light, temperature and air.The first problem was easily solved with the use of a recently developed enzyme that reacted only to glucose. To stabilize the chemicals, the Frees experimented with rubber cement, potato starch, varnish, plaster of Paris and egg albumin before settling on gelatin, which appeared to work best.With her husband, Ms. Free wrote two books on urinalysis. Later in her career she returned to school, earning a master’s in clinical laboratory management from Central Michigan University in 1978 at age 55. She held several patents and published more than 200 scientific papers.At Miles, she rose to director of clinical laboratory reagents and later to director of marketing services in the research division before retiring in 1982; by then the company had been acquired by Bayer. She was elected president of the American Chemical Society in 1993. In 2009, she was awarded a National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama, and in 2011 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y., for her role in developing the dip-and-read test.Ms. Free receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama in 2011 in a White House ceremony. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressAlfred Free died in 2000. In addition to her son Eric, Ms. Free is survived by two other sons, Kurt and Jake; three daughters, Bonnie Grisz, Nina Lovejoy and Penny Maloney; a stepson, Charles; two stepdaughters, Barbara Free and Jane Linderman; 17 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.Miles Laboratories followed the introduction of the dip-and-read glucose test with a host of other tests designed to detect proteins, blood and other indicators of metabolic, kidney and liver disorders. “They sure went hog wild on diagnostics, and that’s all Al’s fault,” Ms. Free said in the commemorative booklet. “He was the one who pushed diagnostics.”It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Several years after the introduction of the dip-and-read test, Miles moved Ms. Free to another division, citing an anti-nepotism policy. But two years later, after a change in management, she was transferred back to her husband’s division.“They realized that breaking up a team like this was interfering with productivity in the lab,” Ms. Free said.

A Wyss Institute-led collaboration spanning four research labs and hundreds of miles has used the Institute’s organ-on-a-chip (Organ Chip) technology to identify the antimalarial drug amodiaquine as a potent inhibitor of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The Organ Chip-based drug testing ecosystem established by the collaboration greatly streamlines the process of evaluating the safety and efficacy of existing drugs for new medical applications, and provides a proof-of-concept for the use of Organ Chips to rapidly repurpose existing drugs for new medical applications, including future pandemics. The research is reported in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
While many groups around the world have been testing existing drugs for efficacy against COVID-19 using cultured cells, it is well known that cells grown in a dish do not behave like the cells in a living human body, and many drugs that appear effective in lab studies do not work in patients. The Wyss team examined eight existing drugs, including hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, that they and others had found were active against SARS-CoV-2 in conventional cell culture assays.
When tested in their more sophisticated microfluidic Lung Airway Chip, which had been infected with a pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 virus, they found that most of these drugs, including hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, were not effective. However, another antimalarial drug, amodiaquine, was highly effective at preventing viral entry. These results were then validated in cultured cells and in a small animal model of COVID-19 using infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus. Amodiaquine is now in clinical trials for COVID-19 at multiple sites in Africa, where this drug is inexpensive and widely available.
“The speed with which this team assembled, pivoted to COVID-19, and produced clinically significant results is astonishing,” said senior author and Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. “We started testing these compounds in February 2020, had data by March, and published a preprint in April. Thanks to the openness and collaboration that the pandemic has sparked within the scientific community, our lead drug is now being tested in humans. It’s a powerful testament to Organ Chips’ ability to accelerate preclinical testing.”
From mysterious disease to lead compound in months
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when little was known about the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, efforts were made around the globe to identify existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat patients who were falling ill. While early data performed on cells grown in lab dishes seemed to suggest that the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine could treat the disease, later studies showed that they aren’t active against SARS-CoV-2 in animals or patients, and the quest for an effective oral therapeutic that can both treat and prevent COVID-19 continues.

From radio to television to the internet, telecommunications transmissions are simply information carried on light waves and converted to electrical signals.
Silicon-based fiber optics are currently the best structures for high-speed, long distance transmissions, but graphene — an all-carbon, ultra-thin and adaptable material — could improve performance even more.
In a study published April 16 in ACS Photonics, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers fabricated graphene into the smallest ribbon structures to date using a method that makes scaling-up simple. In tests with these tiny ribbons, the scientists discovered they were closing in on the properties they needed to move graphene toward usefulness in telecommunications equipment.
“Previous research suggested that to be viable for telecommunication technologies, graphene would need to be structured prohibitively small over large areas, (which is) a fabrication nightmare,” says Joel Siegel, a UW-Madison graduate student in physics professor Victor Brar’s group and co-lead author of the study. “In our study, we created a scalable fabrication technique to make the smallest graphene ribbon structures yet and found that with modest further reductions in ribbon width, we can start getting to telecommunications range.”
Graphene is hailed as a wonder-material for technologies like telecommunications or solar cells because it is easy to work with, is relatively inexpensive, and has unique physical properties such as being both an insulator and conductor of electricity.
If modified to interact with higher energy light, graphene could be used to modulate telecommunications signals at lightning-quick speeds. For example, it could be used to block unwanted communications frequencies.