Bristol photographer Tom Skipp has been working with the UNCOVER Group to understand the human stories and motivations behind the people who are playing a role in global efforts to overcome COVID-19.

Tom was concerned by what he felt was a public distrust of science and an anecdotal feeling that minority populations might be dissuaded to take a vaccine given a historic prejudice by institutions. He felt that scientists are perceived as inaccessible, usually only seen on pedestals or next to government officials disseminating statistics, and limiting civil liberties.

By meeting some of the people involved in the UNCOVER group, Tom hoped to understand their stories and motivations and relate those to the people of Bristol on a street level. Tom has captured a series of portraits some of which are part of a billboard campaign on show at various locations across Bristol until the 9th May.

Dr Rajeka Lazarus, consultant in infectious diseases and microbiology at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston, runs COVID vaccine trials and has been motivated by the impact of COVID on minoritized populations.

Dr Ore Francis, a post-doctoral research assistant developing a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus to make COVID research faster and safer.  He has been motivated by the generosity of people donating samples and resourced to the global COVID research efforts.

Talking about his project, Tom said: “These photographs are all taken where the people have been carrying out their work over the last year, in university labs, hospitals and at home. They’ve all been experiencing the daily struggles and burdens put upon all of us by the pandemic with the added pressure of having the capabilities to do something about it.”

• 92-98 Kingsland Road, BS2 0QZ – Drs Ore Francis, Research Associate, and Rajeka Lazarus, a consultant in infectious diseases and microbiology at UHBW
• 28 Stapleton Road, BS5 0QX – Dek Woolfson, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute
• 34 Ashley Road, BS6 5NS – Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics at Bristol, Director of the Bristol Vaccine Centre at Bristol Medical School and lead of Bristol UNCOVER Group
• 265 Church Road, BS5 9HU – Dr David Mathews, Reader in Virology
• Electric Ladyland, Trinity Road, BS2 0FJ – Dr Christy Waterfall, Senior Research Associate

Image credit: Tom Skipp 

A national research project to study the effects of emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 has been launched. The £2.5 million UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded ‘G2P-UK’ National Virology Consortium will study how mutations in the virus affect key outcomes such as how transmissible it is, the severity of COVID-19 it causes, and the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments.

The Consortium will bring together leading virologists from ten research institutions including Drs Andrew Davidson and David Matthews from the University of Bristol. They will work alongside the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, which plays a world-leading role in virus genome sequencing, and Public Health England to boost the UK’s capacity to study newly identified virus variants and rapidly inform government policy.

The consortium is led by Professor Wendy Barclay, from Imperial College London, who said: “The UK has been fantastic in sequencing viral genomes and identifying new variants – now we have to better understand which mutations affect the virus in a way that might affect our control strategies. We are already working to determine the effects of the recent virus variants identified in the UK and South Africa and what that means for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and vaccine effectiveness.”

Bristol will be leading on the application of synthetic biology approaches to engineer synthetic pesudovirus platform technologies to probe virus infectivity.

Bristol scientists have demonstrated a new virtual reality [VR] technique which should help in developing drugs against the SARS-CoV-2 virus – and enable researchers to share models and collaborate in new ways. The innovative tool, created by University of Bristol researchers, and published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, will help scientists around the world identify anti-viral drug leads more rapidly.

‘Interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR) is an effective tool for flexible substrate and inhibitor docking to the SARS-CoV-2 main protease’ by A Mulholland et al in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling

In this breakthrough study, the research groups in Bristol’s Faculty of Life Sciences, Professor Peter Cullen from the School of Biochemistry; Dr Yohei Yamauchi, Associate Professor and virologist from the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Dr Boris Simonetti, a senior researcher in the Cullen lab, used multiple approaches to discover that SARS-CoV-2 recognises a protein called neuropilin-1 on the surface of human cells to facilitate viral infection.

Neuropilin-1 is a host factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection

James L. Daly, Boris Simonetti, Katja Klein, Kai-En Chen, Maia Kavanagh Williamson, Carlos Antón-Plágaro, Deborah K. Shoemark, Lorena Simón-Gracia, Michael Bauer, Reka Hollandi, Urs F. Greber, Peter Horvath, Richard B. Sessions, Ari Helenius, Julian A. Hiscox, Tambet Teesalu, David A. Matthews, Andrew D. Davidson, Brett M. Collins, Peter J. Cullen1, Yohei Yamauchi

Science  20 Oct 2020: DOI: 10.1126/science.abd3072

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/10/19/science.abd3072

Infectious disease modelling experts at the University of Bristol have conducted a rapid review and developed a new epidemic model which contributed to evidence considered by SAGE to assess the effectiveness of different interventions that could stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in a university setting. The findings have provided the sector with recommendations to help reduce the risk for students, staff and the wider community.

COVID-19 transmission in a university setting: a rapid review of modelling studies

Hannah Christensen, Katy Turner, Adam Trickey, Ross D Booton, Gibran Hemani, Emily Nixon, Caroline Relton, Leon Danon, Matthew Hickman, Ellen Brooks Pollock

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.07.20189688

High COVID-19 transmission potential associated with re-opening universities can be mitigated with layered interventions

Ellen Brooks-Pollock, Hannah Christensen, Adam Trickey, Gibran Hemani, Emily Nixon, Amy Thomas, Katy Turner, Adam Finn, Matt Hickman, Caroline Relton, Leon Danon

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.10.20189696

A team led by Jonathan Sterne, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology, and Deputy Director of the NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Bristol BRC) has conducted a meta-analysis of seven trials and found that corticosteroids reduce the risk of death among critically ill COVID-19 patients by 20 per cent. The team included international collaborators and was co-ordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The study looked at mortality over a 28-day period after the start of treatment. They found that treatment with one of the three corticosteroids dexamethasone, hydrocortisone or methylprednisolone led to an estimated 20 per cent reduction in the risk of death. The dexamethasone finding is mainly based on results from the RECOVERY trial, which were included in the analysis.

Association Between Administration of Systemic Corticosteroids and Mortality Among Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19

A Meta-analysis

The WHO Rapid Evidence Appraisal for COVID-19 Therapies (REACT) Working Group

Article Information

JAMA. 2020;324(13):1330-1341. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.17023

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2770279

Guest Blog: Elizabeth Blackwell Institute Director Professor Rachael Gooberman-Hill

Blog 6 July 2020

Early COVID-19 research – the bedrock for scientific next steps

Research at Bristol has risen to the challenge of SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes, COVID-19. Since the start of the pandemic, colleagues across the University have taken huge strides to use their expertise to move quickly on work that addresses the immediate and longer-term questions around the virus.

Here at the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute we’ve run a funding call to support research across all faculties and disciplines; designed to support research with as little bureaucracy as possible and maximum impact. We’ve supported over 60 projects in total in the space of three months, with around half of them in the UNCOVER group – an emergency research group at the University of Bristol set up specifically to tackle COVID-19.

Elizabeth Blackwell Institute funded COVID-19 research

The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute has been helping scientists to plant their seeds and it’s satisfying to watch them grow. The UNCOVER group’s work is high quality, and its success is down to the hard work of everyone involved, who have all worked fast and with massive efficiency. At the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute we’re going to learn from the streamlined research funding processes that we’ve been able to use over recent months.

Discoveries from UNCOVER are already being published so that the international research community can use it straight away. It’s making steps in important directions, particularly in our understanding of transmission, treatment and prevention of COVID-19. UNCOVER includes work here at Bristol and in partnership with others, and is underpinning proposals to major research funders. Some of the research completed already, just within a few months, is providing the bedrock for the next steps in the science.

I’ve been overawed from the start by the energy and commitment of Bristol’s staff in the research response to the pandemic, our thanks from all at the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for your hard work.