A drug to treat patients who contracted the novel coronavirus was approved by the FDA on Thursday. The drug, the antiviral remdesivir, was part of clinical trials in Sacramento and used by doctors in the capital city.

Remdesivir is the first drug in the U.S. to be approved for treating patients with COVID-19.

The Office of Research and the School of Medicine had planned to introduce their Oct. 30 speaking guest as a professor and the founder and director of the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley, and a CRISPR pioneer.

Since being booked for the Distinguished Speaker Series in Research and Innovation, however, Jennifer Doudna has added a new title: Nobel laureate.

Timothy Albertson, chair of internal medicine and specialist in pulmonary and critical care, is leading one of UC Davis Health’s two trials of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ antibody cocktail. He answers questions about the trials, the antibodies and how they might work.

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In a new clinical trial, UC Davis Health will test the effectiveness and safety of REGN-COV2, the monoclonal antibody cocktail, in preventing COVID-19 in adults living with infected patients. The drug was recently administered to President Donald Trump as part of his treatment for SAR-CoV-2 infection.

In mid-March, researchers at UC Davis were asked to adjust or reduce their work when possible in order to limit social contact and minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus. This “ramp down” meant that some campus research was postponed.

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Facilities Management and researchers are collecting and analyzing samples from the campus sewer system as one more tool to potentially identify and halt an outbreak of COVID-19.

Samples collected so far — all at the wastewater treatment plant — have returned mostly negative results. The team occasionally detected low levels of the coronavirus in samples collected in late August and September, consistent with cases of COVID-19 reported by the campus.

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Four UC Davis research centers will share a $3.7 million grant to offer free COVID-19 testing for agricultural workers in the Central Valley, where the coronavirus pandemic has reached alarming levels, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Wednesday.

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Although COVID-19 science has raced forward, the pandemic is likely to have an enormous impact on our lives deep into 2021, even with a vaccine on the horizon next year, two top UC Davis Health experts said this week on UC Davis LIVE: COVID-19.

Laboratory tests of surgical and N95 masks by researchers at the University of California, Davis, show that they do cut down the amount of aerosolized particles emitted during breathing, talking and coughing. Tests of homemade cloth face coverings, however, show that the fabric itself releases a large amount of fibers into the air, underscoring the importance of washing them. The work is published Sept. 24 in Scientific Reports.

UC Davis Health has been selected as a site for a new clinical trial (OSCAR) to test otilimab as a potential treatment for severe pulmonary COVID-19-related disease.

Otilimab, a human monoclonal antibody, was under investigation as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. Now, the OSCAR clinical trial will evaluate the efficacy and safety of a single infusion of otilimab in treating severe lung inflammation in COVID-19 patients.