Work on a new COVID-19 drug by a Tulane University School of Medicine researcher is getting fast-tracked. Jay Kolls, MD, a professor of medicine and pediatrics, the John W. Deming Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine, and director of Tulane’s Center for Translational Research in Infection and Inflammation, has received a $100,000 Fast Grant for his research to create a drug that prevents the COVID-19 virus from entering healthy cells.

When COVID-19 sent countries into a global lockdown last year, Engy Ziedan, PhD, assistant professor of economics at the School of Liberal Arts, suspected she would measure the economic fallout.

The National Institutes of Health has selected Tulane National Primate Research Center to lead a new partnership between the seven federally funded National Primate Research Centers to combine their efforts to accelerate promising COVID-19 vaccine and drug research.

Tulane’s campuses brimmed with excitement as students began the spring semester. 

Physicians, nurses, researchers, medical staff, volunteers and countless others have been battling the COVID-19 pandemic on the frontlines for months. Now, with the COVID-19 vaccine starting to be distributed to eligible groups, the community is one step closer to seeing an eventual end to the pandemic.

About 50 members of the Tulane community received their first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday in the J. Bennett Johnston Building.