By Erin Schumaker, Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun and Evan Peng

Presented by Kidney Care Access Coalition

Krogan | Research!America

Molecular biologist Nevan Krogan is racking up accolades for his research on future pandemic threats, including spearheading an international research collaboration that mapped how SARS-CoV-2 hijacks and rewires cells.

His work led to antiviral drugs that are in clinical trials and a flood of research funding, including $67.5 million from the National Institutes of Health and $9 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, Krogan won the first Discovery Innovation Health prize last month from the science advocacy group Research!America.

Erin spoke with Krogan to learn where his research collaborations are headed next.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Tell me more about the Quantitative Biosciences Institute and its focus on bringing scientists together. 

In January 2020, we were the first group to clone out all of the SARS-CoV-2 genes. And then we tweeted, “Hey, we have them. Happy to send it to whoever wants them.”

We sent out these pieces of DNA to over 400 labs in over 40 countries in a couple of weeks.

What did this pandemic-era collaboration teach you?  

We learned how different technologies fit together in ways we didn’t even know. Different disciplines, too: We had biochemists and chemists and structural biologists working together. They'd never done that before.

Did that lead to any research insights?

The problem with science is that we’re too siloed. We don’t see these connections.

You have the virology institute, then you have a cancer institute.

But if you can employ these kinds of unbiased approaches, you can start to see overlap. The same types of genes being mutated in cancer are hijacked by HIV. The same genes being mutated in autism are hijacked by Zika.

In that case, what's next for big discoveries? 

We’ve learned a lot during the pandemic and moved very quickly in large part because we’ve all been collaborating. The question is, can we keep the infrastructure and the spirit alive? Why can't we move this fast on breast cancer and Alzheimer’s and heart disease and Parkinson’s?

We can do this, and we will. This is a silver lining of the pandemic.

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Stow, Mass. | Caitlyn Oates

This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care.

A new kind of sacrament: Chaplains are taking interest in psychedelics to help their flocks as research points to their potential mental health benefits.

Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at [email protected], Daniel Payne at [email protected], Evan Peng at [email protected] or Erin Schumaker at [email protected].

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Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Ben Leonard talks with Robert King, who reports on how the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, created in 2010 to test ways to save Medicare money, has increased federal spending instead of reducing it.

People of both parties tried hydroxychloroquine as a Covid remedy. | AP Photo

Republicans are no more likely than Democrats to use unproven Covid treatments like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, according to new research in JAMA Health Forum.

That defies conventional wisdom, since then-President Donald Trump made headlines during the pandemic for promoting the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid despite a lack of evidence it worked. Ivermectin, which fights parasites in horses, also caught on with conservative commentators as a possible Covid remedy.

Even so: The study, from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard, Northeastern, Northwestern and other schools, surveyed more than 13,000 adults and found those who have lower trust in health professionals and institutions, higher trust in social media and Trump, and believe in conspiracy theories were more likely to report using the unproven treatments.

Why it matters: Government health officials have admitted they lost much of the public’s trust during the pandemic as they struggled to understand how Covid spread, whom it threatened most and which treatments were effective at remedying it.

Institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are on a mission to get the public’s trust back.

Noted: The study found Democrats were more likely to receive treatments backed by evidence, such as vaccines or antivirals.

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A Kenyan child receives the Mosquirix vaccine earlier this year. | AFP via Getty Images

Demand for the world’s first malaria vaccine far exceeds supply, but help is on the way.

The World Health Organization today recommended a competing shot that it believes will dramatically expand supply and drive down prices.

What is it? The new shot is called R21/Matrix-M.

Developed by the University of Oxford, the new vaccine reduced symptomatic cases of malaria by 75 percent in areas with highly seasonal malaria transmission during the year following a three-dose vaccination series, the WHO said Monday.

Why it matters: Nearly half of the world’s population remains at risk of malaria, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Nearly 250 million people had malaria in 2021, and nearly 620,000 died, most of them children under 5 in sub-Saharan Africa, Tedros said.

But there’s limited supply of the first vaccine to win the WHO’s endorsement, Mosquirix from drugmaker GSK.

At least 100 million doses of R21 are expected to be available yearly in the next two years, compared to only 18 million Moquirix doses, said Kate O’Brien, WHO director for immunization, vaccines and biologicals.

The price per dose of the new vaccine will also be less than $4, said Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India, which will make the shot.

That’s less than half of the nearly $10 per dose Mosquirix costs now.

GSK said it would review its pricing.

What’s next? The WHO is expected to prequalify R21 in the next few months, a formal regulatory endorsement which would then allow Gavi, the vaccine alliance backed by wealthy nations, to procure shots for the low-income countries it supports.

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