Health

HE A LTH • Summer 2020 13 Participants can choose to give a sample once, or, for those who want to be in the longitudinal part of the study, choose to come back in the following months to give more samples. "I want to look beyond [a few months]. Like in six months, in nine months, do you still have antibodies? Are you still protected?" Moorman said. Her research is a necessary part of understanding if and how herd immunity can be achieved to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. Moormann's research is one of the very hottest topics right now in thinking about the pandemic, Golan said. "It's incredibly important for two reasons. One is when people get coronavirus infections, they develop the antibodies and it's a question whether those antibodies protect you against another infection of coronavirus," said Golan. A communal effort Each of these doctors' research projects aims to understand COVID- 19 better so they are able to correctly fight against it which is why they obtained crucial funding from MassCPR. MassCPR has been able to create a community of researchers and scientists in Massachusetts that have come together to better understand and control coronavirus. Golan said the collaboration and sharing of data between researchers is a key part of MassCPR and is already leading to important findings. "One thing that has been hugely highlighted by this pandemic is that we weren't too well prepared for it," Golan said. "It's our obligation to the next generation to be ready for the next one in a better way." H Massachusetts NIH funding Massachusetts has the country's highest per-capita rate of funding from the National Institutes of Health, according to the agency. Note: 2020 is through June 1, 2020 Source: National Institutes of Health PHOTO/TMS AERIAL SOLUTIONS "Infectious disease can be defined in what cells the virus infects and what the host response is … both cause disease," said Finberg. Other than looking at the possibility of an antiviral agent to treat COVID-19 and how exactly the disease is caused, he is trying to understand how the virus works inside the body. "Part of Dr. Finberg's research has to do with finding so-called host targets that could be potentially drug targets that could help to prevent the infection of cells by the coronavirus," said Golan. Functional antibodies Moormann, a professor at UMass Medical School who focuses on infectious diseases and immunology, is looking into one of the most popular current research topics in relation to COVID-19, functional antibodies, which help the body fight off the disease. Her study measures the spectrum of functional antibodies, how long these antibodies last for, and how they differ in people of different ages. Antibodies indicate past infections. "Part of the research I have funded is to look at the question of how long do the immunities to the virus that causes COVID-19 last," said Moormann. Though looking at human samples to see how many antibodies currently exist in a person is part of this project, her research has a more longitudinal element where she looks at how the antibodies change over months, getting samples three, six, and nine months after the initial sample. "You can have an immune response that only protects you for a certain period of time, and it might be because your immune response doesn't become a memory response but it helps clear the infection … We don't know how long [COVID-19 antibodies] last," said Moormann. Moormann gets samples from patients who have recovered from coronavirus but also from people who were not diagnosed. She recruits study participants that are healthy and that are patients. She then tests to see whether or not the individual has antibodies. $2B Total funding $2.5B $3B 2,000 4,000 6,000 4,969 $2.54B 5,470 $2.96B '10 '11 '12 '13 '14 '15 '16 '17 '18 '19 Number of grants Total funding $200M $153M '10 '11 '12 '13 '14 '15 '16 '17 '18 '19 State rank among NIH recipients 2 4 6 8 $150M $100M $50M $75M 4 6 '20 UMass Medical NIH funding UMass Medical School in Worcester receives the greatest portion of National Institutes of Health funding making its way to Central Massachusetts and is regularly the top recipient outside major Boston and Cambridge institutions. $2B Total funding $2.5B $3B 2,000 4,000 6,000 4,969 $2.54B 5,470 $2.96B '10 '11 '12 '13 '14 '15 '16 '17 '18 '19 Number of grants Total funding $200M $153M '10 '11 '12 '13 '14 '15 '16 '17 '18 '19 State rank among NIH recipients 2 4 6 8 $150M $100M $50M $75M 4 6 '20 "I want to look beyond [a few months]. Like in six months, in nine months, do you still have antibodies? Are you still protected?" Dr. Ann Moormann, professor at UMass Medical School UMass Medicine Science Park in Worcester

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