Coronavirus Research

Katalin Karikó of the Perelman School of Medicine is lauded for her work with Perelman’s Drew Weissman pioneering the use of synthetic messenger RNA to fight diseases, which served as the basis for two widely used COVID-19 vaccines.

Paul Offit of the Perelman School of Medicine says that uncertain benefits for children and lack of historical data on bivalent vaccines might not justify pediatric authorizations for omicron boosters.

In Drew Weissman’s lab at the Perelman School of Medicine, researchers like Mohamad-Gabriel Alameh, Benjamin Davis, and Garima Dwivedi are developing pan-coronavirus vaccines to guard against future variants.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine are noted for their key 2005 advances with synthetic mRNA.

Capstan Therapeutics, a Penn spinout whose founders include Carl June, Bruce Levine, and Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine, has launched with $165 million raised to develop a new type of CAR therapy that incorporates mRNA.

E. John Wherry of the Perelman School of Medicine says that the Long Covid Research Initiative’s greater risk tolerance and more rapid investment pivoting could enable it to outpace the National Institutes of Health.

John Wherry of the Perelman School of Medicine advises people who recently received COVID boosters to wait for their antibodies to wane before receiving an updated one.